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RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 


RELIGION  AND 
MIRACLE 


BY 

GEORGE  A.  GORDON 
H 

MINISTER  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH  CHURCH 
BOSTON 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

<&\}t  fttoer?ibe  $xt&  Cambribge 

1909 


B~ri7 


COPYRIGHT,   1909,  BY  GEORGE  A.   GORDON 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  October  iqoq 


\ 


*   *    *   *i* 


I  dedicate  this  Book  to  the  Inspiring 
Memory  of  my  Father,  George  Gordon, 
of  Insch,  Scotland,  —  born  and  bred  to 
the  vocation  of  farmer :  a  brilliant  mind, 
one  of  the  bravest  of  men,  to  whom  the 
order  of  summer  and  winter,  seed-time 
and  harvest  was  a  token  of  the  Infinite 
good-will,  and  who  toiled  in  the  Fields 
of  Time  in   the   sense  of  the  Eternal. 


*    *h    *b    *b 


304030 


jU. 


PREFACE 

When  a  teacher  and  preacher  of  the  Christian 
religion  moves  from  the  circumference  toward 
the  heart  of  faith,  miracles  fall  out  of  the 
sphere  of  his  vision.  He  may  not  deny  the 
reality  of  miracles,  but  more  and  more  mir- 
acles cease  to  be  significant  for  him.  He  is 
dealing  with  the  Eternal  as  it  shines  by  its  own 
light,  and  in  that  case  outward  witness  of  any 
kind  for  the  things  of  the  soul  becomes  super- 
fluous. For  many  years  I  have  lived  in  this 
mood.  Slowly  miracles  have  ceased  to  serve 
me  in  the  evolution  of  my  belief,  in  the  moral 
campaign  of  my  spirit.  For  me  the  heart  of 
the  universe  is  God,  the  Eternal  Spirit;  the 
permanent  force  in  man  is  the  soul  that  an- 
swers to  the  Infinite  soul;  the  incomparable 
genius  of  Christianity  is  in  the  way  in  which 
it  enables  human  beings  to  live  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  our  Father  in  Heaven.  Christian- 
ity is,  in  my  judgment,  incomparable  as  the 


viii  PREFACE 

religion  of  revelation  and  reconciliation;  it 
brings  spirit  to  light,  the  Divine  and  the  hu- 
man ;  it  brings  peace.  The  words  of  the  great 
prophet  of  the  exile  describe  with  rare  felicity 
the  privilege  of  the  Christian  preacher :  "  How 
beautiful  upon  the  mountains  are  the  feet  of 
him  that  bringeth  good  tidings,  that  publish- 
eth  peace,  that  bringeth  good  tidings  of  good, 
that  publisheth  salvation;  that  saith  unto  Zion, 
Thy  God  reigneth ! " '  It  is  said  of  Christ : "  He 
came  and  preached  peace  to  you  that  were  far 
off,  and  peace  to  them  that  were  nigh:  for 
through  him  we  both  have  our  access  in  one 
Spirit  unto  the  Father." 2  For  the  great  apostle 
to  the  nations  the  gospel  became  essentially 
one  thing,  the  gospel  of  reconciliation.  Into 
these  divine  depths  in  Christianity,  the  su- 
preme religion  of  the  spirit,  all  devout  and 
happy  disciples  of  the  Master  and  preachers 
of  his  message  at  length  come. 

Sharing  in  this  universal  discipline  of  hon- 
est and  advancing  souls,  it  never  occurred  to 
me  to  write  anything  upon  the  subject  of  re- 
1  Isaiah  lii,  7.  '  Ephesians  ii,  17-18. 


PREFACE  ix 

ligion  and  miracle.  I  had  for  many  years 
dwelt  in  a  sphere  far  removed  from  outward 
signs  and  wonders;  I  had,  therefore,  quietly 
ceased  to  regard  the  tradition  of  signs  and 
wonders  that  accompanied  the  Lord.  One  day, 
however,  I  fell  into  conversation  with  a  com- 
pany of  young  ministers ;  I  found  them  greatly 
troubled.  They  felt  that  as  honest  men  they 
could  not  say  that  they  believed  in  miracles ; 
and  that  incapacity  created  suspicion  as  to 
how  much  of  the  gospel  remains  when  the 
miracles  are  set  aside. 

This  question  I  was  invited  to  discuss  at 
our  Boston  Ministers'  Meeting  two  or  three 
years  ago,  and  the  response  which  I  then  re- 
ceived, alike  from  men  of  conservative  opin- 
ions and  from  men  of  radical  views,  led  me  to 
reconsider  the  whole  subject.  At  the  same 
time  there  came  the  invitation  to  lecture  on 
the  Nathaniel  W.  Taylor  Foundation  in  Yale 
University.  In  this  way  the  little  volume  now 
published  came  into  existence. 

I  am  unwilling  that  any  one  who  may  look 
into  this  volume  should  fail  to  grasp  my  pur- 


x  PREFACE 

pose  in  writing  it.  I  have  no  interest  in  the 
destruction  of  the  belief  in  miracle.  I  am  con- 
cerned to  show  that  where  miracle  has  ceased 
to  be  regarded  as  true,  Christianity  remains  in 
its  essence  entire;  that  the  fortune  of  religion 
is  not  to  be  identified  with  the  fortune  of 
miracle;  that  the  message  of  Jesus  Christ  to 
the  world  is  independent  of  miracle,  lives  by 
its  own  reality  and  worth,  self-evidencing  and 
self-attesting.  If  it  shall  be  allowed  by  fair- 
minded  men  that  I  have  made  even  a  slight 
contribution  toward  the  final  emancipation  of 
the  fundamental  beliefs  of  Christian  men  from 
the  cycle  of  signs  and  wonders,  and  from  the 
fate  that  with  the  advance  of  science  seems  to 
threaten  the  entire  tradition  of  miracle,  I  shall 
be  satisfied.  I  conceive  myself  to  be  a  genuine 
conservative ;  I  am  conscious  that  I  work  for 
the  preservation  of  essential  historic  Christian- 
ity ;  I  consider  myself  to  be,  to  the  extent  of 
my  power,  a  defender  of  the  eternal  gospel. 
I  regard  the  vision  of  God  and  of  human  ex- 
istence, embodied  in  the  message  and  person 
of  Jesus  Christ,  as  the  most  precious  posses- 


PREFACE  jd 

sion  of  mankind ;  and  I  should  be  glad  to 
make  it  impossible  for  those  who  are  unable  to 
agree  with  me  in  the  discussion  that  follows 
to  misunderstand  me  here. 

George  A.  Gordon. 

Old  South  Parsonage,  Boston, 
June  19,  1909. 


CONTENTS 

I.  The  Issue  Defined 1 

II.  Belief  in  God  and  Miracle        ...        46 

III.  Jesus  Christ  and  Miracle      .        .        .        .83 

IV.  The  Christian  Life  and  Miracle      .       .      132 
V.  An  Eternal  Gospel 172 


BELIGION  AND  MIEACLE 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   ISSUE   DEFINED 
I 

MY  first  word  must  be  one  of  thanks  for 
the  honor  done  me  by  Yale  University 
in  inviting  me  to  lecture  on  the  Nathaniel  W. 
Taylor  Foundation.  It  is  one  of  many  similar 
privileges  and  distinctions  that  I  have  received 
during  the  last  twenty  years  from  the  same 
honored  source.  My  association  with  Yale 
University,  while  of  little  moment  to  her,  has 
been  one  of  the  highest  satisfactions  of  my 
life.  I  should  take  more  pleasure  in  this  new 
honor  if  it  did  not  bring  me  face  to  face  with 
a  grave  responsibility.  He  must  be  wanting 
in  moral  sensibility  who  faces  this  lectureship 
without  serious  misgiving.  For  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  Dr.  Taylor  is  a  great  historic 

l 


J  ;.:.<  ^IiaiON  AND  MIRACLE 

figure  in  the  evolution  of  the  New  England 
theology.  Indeed,  no  small  part  of  the  felicity 
of  this  Foundation  is  in  doing  something  to 
rescue  a  great  and  brilliant  name  from  the 
oblivion  that  lies  in  wait  for  all  save  the  sub- 
lime remnant  of  the  servants  of  God.  Too 
readily  does  the  generation  in  power  consent 
to  this  robbery  of  time ;  too  easily  does  it  take 
for  granted  the  inevitableness  of  this  erasure 
of  shining  names  from  the  memory  of  the  liv- 
ing. While  there  are  a  few  names  that  the 
world  cannot  forget,  so  deeply  are  they  en- 
graved on  its  heart,  there  are  many  whom 
it  behooves  the  world  not  to  forget.  Noble 
men  recognize  as  part  of  their  duty  to  their 
time  this  recollection  of  famous  lives;  to  this 
end  they  enter  into  a  humane  conspiracy  to 
defeat  the  second  death  to  which  every  servant 
of  truth  and  righteousness  is  exposed. 

It  would  be  something  of  a  reproach  if  we 
who  honor  the  great  and  difficult  science  of 
theology  should  lightly  cease  to  regard  so 
eminent  a  master  of  that  science  as  Nathaniel 
W.  Taylor.  Here  was  a  man  of  capacious  and 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  3 

brilliant  intellect,  lifted  by  long  and  severe 
discipline  to  the  temper  and  efficiency  of  a 
Damascus  blade.  Among  worthy  objects  of 
admiration,  educated  men  will  always  give  a 
high  place  to  the  powerful  and  splendid  intel- 
lect. To  be  admitted  to  the  study  of  a  mind 
of  this  order,  to  gain  some  sense  of  its  range 
and  efficiency,  to  come  under  the  fascination 
of  its  movement  and  power,  is  one  of  the 
greatest  educational  forces  known  to  man. 
There  is  no  surer  way  of  gaining  in  intellec- 
tual strength  and  integrity  than  by  joining 
ourselves,  in  critical  homage,  to  the  great  his- 
toric masters  of  our  particular  discipline.  Ad- 
miration for  Dr.  Taylor  is  well  founded,  and 
in  the  rushing  extempore  world  into  which  we 
have  come,  with  its  too  frequent  affluence  of 
words  and  its  poverty  of  ideas,  —  and  where 
ideas  do  exist,  their  crudity  and  confusion,  — 
familiarity  with  the  premeditation,  plan,  order, 
precision,  sequence,  vigor,  and  rigor  of  this 
master  must  issue  in  good  and  in  good  only 
to  the  enthusiastic  and  wise  student. 

Nor  must  we  overlook   the  greatness   of 


4  RELIGION  AND   MIRACLE 

Dr.  Taylor's  theological  interest.  His  central 
thought  was  the  moral  government  of  the 
world.  He  does  not  conceive  and  shape  his 
subject  as  we  should  like  him  to  do;  his 
method  of  treatment  does  not  always  com- 
mend itself  to  the  sense  of  science  and  his- 
tory that  to-day  controls  the  scholar  and 
thinker ;  his  work  in  many  ways  is  a  disap- 
pointment; yet  when  all  this  has  been  said, 
and  said  with  emphasis,  it  still  remains  clear 
and  incontestable  that  Dr.  Taylor  gave  his 
life  to  the  service  of  one  of  the  deepest  and 
most  momentous  interests  of  the  human  mind, 
—  the  moral  order  of  the  world,  the  moral 
character  of  the  universe. 

Here  again,  therefore,  we  recall  his  name 
with  honor,  and  under  the  inspiration  of  his 
illustrious  example  we  turn  from  the  lighter 
concerns  of  faith  to  the  greater,  from  the 
trivial  to  the  eternal.  In  raising  the  issue  as 
to  the  relation  of  religion  to  miracle,  I  may 
assuredly  count  upon  the  favor  of  his  valiant 
and  free  spirit;  in  declaring  that  religion 
stands  on  its  own  feet,  lives  by  its  own  might, 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  5 

I  may  further  count  upon  his  sympathy ;  in 
asserting  that  religion  is  independent  of  mir- 
acle, I  may  claim  his  eager  and  benign  interest 
if  I  cannot  be  sure  of  his  consent.  In  any 
event,  my  discussion  is  in  the  freedom  of  the 
spirit  which  is  our  most  precious  inheritance 
from  all  the  greater  masters  of  the  New  Eng- 
land divinity.  They  were  stern  men,  whose 
hearts  grew  sick  over  every  *  mush  of  conces- 
sions," who  hated  unreality  under  every  dis- 
guise, who  reserved  for  the  pretentious  but 
vacant  mind  a  noble  contempt,  and  who  ex- 
acted of  the  thinker  in  freedom  nothing  but 
honest  work  done  in  the  solemn  sense  of  ac- 
countability to  God  and  man. 

I  may  as  well  begin  my  discussion  of  re- 
ligion and  miracle  by  telling  you  the  upshot 
of  it  all.  Many  persons  will  not  start  seri- 
ously to  read  a  romance  till  they  have  glanced 
through  the  final  chapters  and  are  sure  that 
the  issues  of  the  plot  are  satisfactory.  John 
Henry  Newman,  an  adept  in  argument,  used 
to  remark  that  one  can  convince  men  by  logic 
when  one  can  shoot  round  corners ;  and  while 


6  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

this  statement  is  a  manifest  exaggeration,  it 
nevertheless  reveals  the  liquid  prejudice  in 
which  the  minds  of  most  men  float.  There  is 
apt  to  be  a  bias  in  the  mind,  and  men  with  a 
bias  will  dispute  an  axiom  when  it  points  the 
wrong  way,  like  the  farmer  who  said  he  would 
not  admit  that  twice  two  are  four  till  he  saw 
what  use  his  antagonist  intended  to  make  of 
the  admission.  A  friend  told  me  that  he  took 
the  greatest  delight  in  reading  over  and  over 
again  the  account  of  certain  battles  whose 
issue  was  completely  satisfactory  to  him.  The 
battles  of  Marathon,  Arbela,  Cannse,  Pharsalia, 
Waterloo,  and  Gettysburg  were  a  perpetual 
treat  to  him  because  he  knew  what  was  com- 
ing and  liked  it.  I  fear  this  is  the  mood  in 
which  multitudes  of  men  follow  a  course  of 
argument.  If  they  know  the  issue  and  like  it, 
then  the  reasoning  is  a  delight ;  if  they  know 
the  conclusion  and  dislike  it,  the  argument  is 
undone. 

The  issue  of  my  argument  is  such  as  to  com- 
mend itself  to  all  sensible  and  good  men.  I 
am  not  concerned  with  the   destruction  of 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  7 

belief  in  miracle ;  my  purpose  is  not  to  prove 
or  discuss  the  unreality  of  miracle.  I  do  not 
touch  this  vast  wonder-world  except  inciden- 
tally in  a  few  preliminary  observations.  My 
plea  is  not  against  miracle,  but  against  the 
identification  of  the  fortune  of  religion  with 
the  fortune  of  miracle.  My  contention  is  in 
behalf  of  the  Christian  religion  in  its  essence. 
The  Christian  religion  is  the  vision  of  the 
Eternal  moral  order  and  the  vision  of  the 
Eternal  grace  in  that  order :  these  two  visions 
are  living  forces  in  Jesus  Christ ;  from  him  they 
go  forth  to  work  through  all  human  history, 
to  meet  and  overcome  the  vision  of  sin  and 
death.  I  maintain  that  the  solution  of  all  our 
graver  difficulties  is  through  prof ounder  living 
in  God.  The  genius  of  religion  is  forever  re- 
vealed in  these  sovereign  words :  — 

The  Eternal  God  is  thy  dwelling  place, 
And  underneath  are  the  everlasting  arms. 

More  and  more  we  return  to  the  apostolic 
declaration  that  in  him  we  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being;  above  all,  we  seek  in  the 


8  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

school  of  Christ  the  moral  sincerity  that  issues 
in  the  vision  of  God.  With  this  announce- 
ment of  purpose,  and  with  this  anticipation  of 
my  conclusion,  I  ask  you  to  "  hear  me  for  my 


cause." 


ii 

Two  things,  and  two  things  only,  are  abso- 
lutely essential  to  religion  in  its  highest  form, 
to  the  Christian  religion,  —  the  sense  of  the 
fatherly  love  of  God,  and  the  answering  sense 
on  man's  part  of  filial  love  and  obedience. 
The  Christian  religion  as  it  stands  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  its  Founder  is  his  sense  of  the 
perfect  fatherly  love  of  God  and  the  answer  to 
this  of  the  filial  love  and  obedience  of  his  own 
soul.  In  the  disciples  of  Jesus  the  same  double 
consciousness  exists.  There  is  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  infinite  compassionate  love  of  the 
Father  in  heaven,  and  there  is  the  answering 
consciousness  of  the  human  spirit  in  its  ideals, 
purposes,  and  struggles.  To  this  central  con- 
sciousness, with  its  Divine  and  human  aspects, 
Jesus  remains  the  Way,  the  Truth,  and  the 
life.  He  is  the  example  of  the  way  in  which 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  9 

men  come  to  know  God  as  Father  and  them- 
selves as  sons  of  God  —  the  vision  of  the  uni- 
verse through  what  is  highest  in  the  soul,  the 
acceptance  of  the  verdict  of  the  spirit  as  to  the 
value  of  man's  life.  Jesus  is  the  example  of 
the  truth ;  he  is  the  union  in  perfect  clearness 
and  peace  of  the  consciousness  of  God  as 
Father  and  the  consciousness  of  man  as  the 
son  of  God.  He  is  the  example  of  the  life ;  he 
is  the  life  of  victorious  justice,  purity,  pity, 
and  sacrifice  which  flows  from  the  truth.  The 
uniqueness  of  Jesus  is  here  as  Way,  as  Truth, 
and  as  Life ;  and  this  uniqueness  in  fact  is  pre- 
sented for  interpretation  to  the  philosophic 
mind. 

From  the  personal  sense  of  God  and  of  the 
soul  as  his  child,  made  effectual  and  happy  in 
the  presence  of  the  great  authentic  Master, 
the  free  mind  ranges  far  and  wide,  seeking 
intimations  of  the  ultimate  character  of  the 
universe  and  the  essential  nature  of  man. 
From  the  centre  of  light  and  peace  it  travels 
to  the  far  circumference  where  twilight  and 
night  appear.  The  result  is  that  the  universe 


10  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

becomes  the  form  of  the  Eternal.  This  formal 
universe  is  two-fold, — cosmic  and  human, — 
and  the  cosmos  is  the  vast  stage  on  which  is 
enacted  the  divine  tragedy  of  human  history. 

This  simple  and  self-sustaining  conception  of 
religion  relates  itself  necessarily  to  other  human 
interests.  It  embodies  itself  in  an  institution, 
that  is,  it  becomes  a  church ;  it  becomes  a  spe- 
cial vocation,  calling  into  existence  the  prophet 
and  his  great  ministry;  it  becomes  a  creed, 
that  is,  it  relates  itself  to  the  philosophy  of 
religion,  and  to  the  general  philosophy  of  the 
world.  It  relates  itself  to  nature  and  raises  the 
question:  In  what  way  does  nature  become 
the  servant  of  religion,  through  portent,  mir- 
acle, signs,  and  wonders,  or  through  a  stead- 
fast and  inviolable  order  ?  It  is  with  this  last 
relation  of  religion  that  we  are  now  concerned, 
—  its  relation  to  nature  and  to  nature  under 
the  conception  of  miracle  and  under  that  of 
law. 

The  reality  of  miracle  has  been  under  sus- 
picion among  educated  minds  in  all  ages.  The 
denial  of  the  reality  of  miracle  is  nothing  new 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  11 

under  the  sun.  For  the  Greek  at  his  maturity 
the  universe  was  a  cosmos,  an  invariable  order, 
the  object  of  scientific  study  and  confidence. 
In  the  scientific  activity  of  Aristotle  we  do 
not  meet  with  miracle.  Portents  may  puzzle 
and  interrupt  the  thinker,  but  they  in  no  way 
disturb  his  confidence  in  the  general  order  of 
cause  and  effect.  For  Spinoza  miracles  have 
no  more  worth  than  they  possess  for  Hume. 
These  examples  suggest  an  unbroken  succes- 
sion of  thinkers  from  the  earliest  times  to  our 
own  day  to  whom  miracle  has  been  no  part  of 
our  historic  world.  If,  therefore,  the  suspicion 
of  miracle  that  to-day  works  in  so  many  minds 
were  nothing  but  a  new  version  of  an  old 
feeling,  if  it  came  from  the  same  quarter  from 
which  this  feeling  has  come  in  every  genera- 
tion since  men  began  to  think,  it  would  not 
be  of  so  much  moment.  For  hitherto  the 
suspicion  of  the  reality  of  miracle  has  come 
largely  from  thinkers  outside  the  pale  of  or- 
ganized Christianity.  Their  conclusions  were 
part  of  their  philosophy  of  the  world ;  as  their 
philosophy  was  foreign,  so  their  conclusions 


12  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

respecting  miracles  were  foreign,  to  the  faith 
of  the  Christian  church. 

The  significance  of  the  new  question  con- 
cerning miracle  is  that  it  comes  from  pro- 
foundly religious  men,  and  from  men  living 
and  potent  within  the  Christian  church.  It  is 
a  new  discussion  that  we  face  when  the  dis- 
ciples of  Jesus  Christ  in  this  twentieth  century 
ask,  Is  miracle  essential  to  religion  ?  Is  mira- 
cle a  genuine  part  of  the  authentic  record  of 
any  true  religion?  Is  the  essential  truth  of 
Christianity  dependent  upon  the  reality  of  the 
miracles  embedded  in  the  evangelical  history  ? 
Is  the  message  of  Jesus  Christ  to  man  separa- 
ble from  the  record  of  signs  and  wonders  with 
which  it  is  accompanied  ?  Scientific  men,  in 
so  far  as  they  are  under  the  scientific  spirit, 
see  no  miracles,  that  is,  they  note  no  viola- 
tions of  the  order  of  cause  and  effect ;  they 
expect  to  meet  with  no  violations  of  this  order ; 
they  believe  in  none.  For  them  the  miracles 
of  all  the  religions  are  the  interesting  pro- 
ducts of  human  imagination  ;  they  are  a  chap- 
ter in  the  serious  fiction  of  the  world.  May 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  13 

a  member  of  the  Christian  church,  may  a 
preacher  of  the  Christian  gospel,  in  any  de- 
gree sympathize  with  the  attitude  of  scientific 
men  toward  miracle,  and  yet  remain  loyal  to 
his  great  Master  ?  These  are  questions  work- 
ing to-day  in  the  religious  mind  wherever  that 
mind  has  obtained  a  modern  education.  These 
questions  finally  reduce  themselves  to  three : 
Under  what  conception  of  the  universe  do  edu- 
cated freemen  think  to-day  ?  What  is  the  lo- 
gical value  of  this  conception  ?  How  far  does 
the  principle  of  verification  lead  us  in  this  dis- 
cussion ? 

HI 

Our  first  question  then  is,  Under  what  con- 
ception of  the  universe  do  educated  freemen 
think  in  our  day  ?  It  is  not  enough  to  answer, 
Under  the  conception  of  law.  There  has  been 
in  the  world  from  the  earliest  time  the  idea  of 
fate.  It  lives  in  some  of  the  oldest  of  religions, 
as  in  the  Karma  of  Buddhism,  transfigured, 
indeed,  by  its  ethical  import.  In  Greek  re- 
ligion the  Fates,  Clotho,  Lacheis,  and  Atropos, 
were  the  daughters  of  Themis,  the  supreme 


14  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

Fate,  upon  which  the  throne  of  Zeus  was 
built.  The  idea  of  fate  has  been  wrought  into 
a  thousand  poetic  forms,  from  the  Sophoclean 
drama  to  the  great  poem  of  Lucretius,  from 
Omar  Khayyam  to  the  "City  of  Dreadful 
Night."  It  has  been  the  leading  idea  in  many 
imposing  systems  of  thought  in  our  modern 
world ;  it  is  the  leading  idea  in  the  work  of 
Spinoza,  Calvin,  and  Spencer.  Indeed,  it  may 
be  said  that  whenever  thinkers  have  come 
under  the  exclusive  sway  of  the  idea  of  the 
One,  they  have  regarded  the  world  of  the  many 
as  its  fated  expression.  Both  in  religion  and 
in  philosophy,  from  the  earliest  time,  this  has 
taken  place.  When  men  become  enamored  of 
the  One,  the  Whole,  the  Eternal,  they  treat 
without  mercy  the  finite  world  of  persons  and 
their  acts,  their  character,  their  fortunes. 
Here  we  have  the  conception  of  an  invariable 
order  arrived  at  by  speculation  and  then  car- 
ried down  to  the  last  detail  of  existence  either 
by  the  poetic  imagination,  as  in  the  case  of 
Lucretius,  or  by  the  steps  of  deductive  logic, 
as  in  the  ethics  of  Spinoza.  In  a  sense  Pro- 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  15 

testants  have  been  bred  under  this  aspect  of 
the  universe.  Predestination  is  a  governing 
idea  in  Paul,  and  this  apostle  is  the  patron 
thinker  of  the  Reformers.  Predestination  in 
Paul  is  turning  out  to  be,  under  free  study,  a 
doctrine  of  hope  for  the  whole  race ;  still,  as 
set  forth  by  John  Calvin,  his  great  disciple  in 
the  sixteenth  century,  it  had  all  the  hardness 
and  horror  of  fate.  For,  according  to  Melanc- 
thon,  who  was  a  good  judge,  Calvin  and  Zeno 
teach  the  same  doctrine.  Life  under  this  fatal- 
istic idea  of  things  has  been  a  stern  discipline. 
It  has  prepared  us  to  look  any  system  of  opin- 
ion in  the  face  without  fear.  The  necessity 
laid  upon  us  was  by  no  means  benign ;  it  was 
laid  upon  us  by  deductive  thought  and  by  the 
poetic  imagination. 

The  sense  of  order  in  nature  was  strong 
among  the  science-loving  Greeks.  Their  great- 
est thinker  united  the  capacity  for  the  widest 
generalizations  with  the  keenest  interest  in  the 
concrete  world  of  man.  Aristotle  speaks  for 
the  higher  mind  of  his  race  when  he  says : 
"  From  the  facts  of  the  case,  Nature  does  not 


16  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

appear  to  be  incoherent  like  a  badly  planned 
tragedy  ! " l  Here  is  the  emergence  of  the  scien- 
tific conception  of  the  invariable  order  of  na- 
ture. It  may  be  in  some  respects  very  much 
like  the  speculative  conception,  but  it  is  unlike 
it  in  two  important  particulars.  It  is  arrived 
at  not  by  deduction,  but  by  induction ;  it  is  in 
consequence  a  sure  possession  of  the  human 
mind.  Consider  for  a  moment  these  two  par- 
ticulars. From  exact  experimental  study  in 
chemistry,  physics,  botany,  biology,  physi- 
ology, psychology,  the  natural,  ethical,  and 
political  history  of  man,  the  idea  of  order, 
which  is  the  presupposition  of  all  science,  has 
risen  up  verified,  attested.  Here  is  a  contrast 
to  the  old  method  whereby  the  sense  of  fate 
was  fixed  in  human  society.  Predestination  is 
not  proved  by  induction ;  fate  is  a  doctrine 
that  has  not  been  established  inductively.  The 
method  of  science  is  from  facts  and  their  ob- 
served behavior  to  laws  and  their  invariable 
operation ;  the  method  of  predestination  and 
fatalism  has  been  from  the  most  general  ideas 
1  Meta.  M.  4. 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  17 

of  the  human  mind  down  to  the  facts  that  are 
crushed  under  those  ideas,  and  that  are  not 
allowed  to  tell  their  own  story,  Jesus  noting 
the  fallen  sparrow  and  thence  traveling  to  the 
Universal  mind,  and  Newton  seeing  the  fall- 
ing apple  and  moving  to  the  apprehension  of 
a  universal  law,  illustrate  in  a  supreme  way, 
in  religion  and  in  cosmic  study,  the  scientific 
spirit.  The  method  is  from  fact  to  law,  from 
life  to  the  Supreme  life.  If  it  be  said  that  the 
history  of  Jesus  is  the  reverse  of  this  method, 
that  in  him  we  have  a  descent  from  the  Eter- 
nal to  an  individual  life  in  the  fields  of  time, 
the  reply  is  that  this  is  indeed  the  history  of 
all  reality,  cosmic  and  human.  Creation  is  the 
movement  of  the  Infinite  forth  from  himself 
into  the  particular  worlds  of  space  and  time. 
It  is  therefore  true  of  all  life,  of  all  creation, 
of  all  human  beings,  including  Jesus  Christ, 
that  the  history  of  reality  is  from  the  eternal 
to  the  temporal.  But  the  history  of  the  way 
in  which  man  traces  the  cosmos  to  its  final 
meaning,  the  history  of  the  way  in  which  man 
moves  to  the  knowledge  of  himself  as  of  con- 


18  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

cern  to  the  Infinite,  is  from  fact  to  law,  from 
living  soul  to  the  living  God.  The  descent  of 
Jesus  Christ  into  time  was  availing  only  as  it 
became  in  his  self-conscious  soul  an  ascent 
back  to  God.  The  fullness  of  his  self-con- 
sciousness at  the  Baptism  would  seem  to  mean 
this.  Over  the  path  in  which  God  had  de- 
scended into  his  soul  he  ascended  into  the 
soul  of  God.  If  the  method  of  creation  be  a 
deduction  from  the  Infinite  life  to  the  finite, 
the  method  of  sure  human  knowledge  is  the 
reversal  of  that  method.  It  is  an  induction 
from  fact  to  principle,  from  particular  to  uni- 
versal, from  man  to  God. 

This  contrast  in  method  by  which  specula- 
tion and  scientific  thought  arrive  at  the  idea 
of  a  universal  order  issues  in  another  contrast 
of  even  greater  moment.  Of  the  old  specula- 
tive idea  of  fate  it  is  possible  to  say  that  it  is 
a  thing  in  the  air;  that  it  is  in  a  region  where 
the  human  intellect  is  incompetent;  that  it  is 
a  mere  dream  when  set  against  the  facts  of 
man's  life.  Professor  Park  used  to  recall  to 
his  students  the  New  England  farmer  who 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  19 

got  into  a  puzzle  over  his  endeavor  to  outwit 
the  Infinite  and  to  take  that  one  of  the  two 
roads  home  from  the  mill  over  which  God  had 
not  predestined  him  to  go,  and  who  took  him- 
self out  of  this  puzzle  by  the  wholesome  con- 
fession, "  God  decreed  that  I  should  be  a 
fool."  The  grip  of  an  idea  that  rises  up  out 
of  fact  cannot  thus  be  undone.  When  an  in- 
variable order  of  sequence  rises  up  out  of  the 
exact  research  of  mankind,  when  this  order  is 
established  by  an  induction  as  wide  as  that 
covered  by  exact  research,  the  conception  at- 
tained cannot  be  abandoned  at  will  or  over- 
thrown by  the  agnostic  sentiment.  It  abides 
as  part  of  the  surest  possessions  of  the  human 
mind.  The  idea  of  the  fixed  order  of  nature 
is  indeed  an  assumption ;  it  is  an  assumption 
to  which  man  is  incapable  of  giving  universal 
and  absolute  verification;  still,  this  assump- 
tion receives  verification  and  no  contradiction 
over  the  entire  field  of  contemporary  science. 
So  far  it  is  as  sure  as  anything  human  can 
well  be. 

The  conception  of  the  fixedness  of  the  natu- 


20  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

ral  order  is  to-day  dominant  among  freemen. 
Where  men  think  and  think  freely  they  are 
inclined  to  rest  in  the  universal  and  invariable 
reign  of  law.  In  the  heavens  above,  in  the 
earth  beneath,  and  in  the  waters  under  the 
earth  cause  and  effect  rule  with  absolute  au- 
thority. There  are  no  effects  without  causes ; 
like  effects  come  from  like  causes.  In  the 
realm  of  nature  this  order  is  constant  and 
inviolable.  We  can  predict  the  coming  of  a 
storm,  but  we  cannot  avert  it.  We  can  record 
the  advent  of  spring,  but  we  can  neither 
hasten  nor  arrest  that  advent.  This  view  of 
the  world  which  comes  to  us  in  a  poetic  way  in 
the  order  of  sunrise  and  sunset,  the  succession 
of  day  and  night,  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the 
tides,  the  procession  of  the  seasons,  the  move- 
ment of  the  planets,  the  coming  and  going  of 
the  great  familiar  constellations,  science  has 
extended  through  the  entire  domain  of  physi- 
cal being,  so  far  as  that  being  is  known. 

Man's  life  as  a  physical  being  is  under  the 
same  law.  Life  comes  from  life ;  man  is  born 
of  human  parents.  So  fixed  is  this  law  that 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  21 

any  other  mode  of  bringing  human  life  into 
the  world  does  not  even  occur  to  a  sane  mind. 
Further,  cause  and  effect  are  seen  in  all  physi- 
cal disorders,  in  all  normal  waste  and  repair, 
in  the  entire  process  of  bodily  life,  and  in 
death.  It  is  natural  to  be  born,  to  grow,  to 
attain  life's  prime,  to  decrease  in  strength,  to 
fail  and  die. 

The  days  of  our  years  are  threescore  years  and  ten, 
Or  even  by  reason  of  strength  fourscore  years; 
Yet  is  their  pride  but  labor  and  sorrow ; 
For  it  is  soon  gone,  and  we  fly  away. 

What  is  this  but  the  matchless  poetic  ex- 
pression of  the  ageless  and  inviolable  law  that 
reigns  in  our  physical  existence?  We  marvel 
when  Mr.  Gladstone  at  the  age  of  sixty-nine 
conducts  one  of  the  greatest  political  cam- 
paigns in  the  nineteenth  century,  dominating 
the  mind  of  the  nation  like  a  king ;  we  marvel 
again  when  at  the  age  of  eighty-four  he  con- 
tinues the  efficient  head  of  the  British  govern- 
ment, but  we  do  not  expect  him,  on  account 
of  these  feats,  to  live  forever.  We  are  confi- 
dent of  the  reverse. 


22  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

The  mind  and  character  of  man  are  not  ex- 
empt from  law.  The  mind  is  conditioned  by 
the  general  bodily  health ;  it  is  especially  con- 
ditioned by  the  brain.  All  this  is  common- 
place, and  the  commonplace  means  the  adjust- 
ment of  the  habits  of  our  thought  to  the  reign 
of  law.  We  claim,  indeed,  the  power  of  free 
initiative  of  the  will.  We  see  in  the  depths 
of  the  spirit  genuine  creative  power,  but  the 
boldest  champion  of  the  freedom  of  human 
spirit  must  recognize  that  in  the  sphere  of 
character,  "Whatsoever  a  man  soweth,  that 
shall  he  also  reap."  Wherever  science  has 
gone  it  has  found  that  things  come  to  pass  in 
a  given  way ;  that  they  do  not  come  to  pass 
in  any  other  way.  The  scientific  mind  natu- 
rally believes  that  if  we  knew  all  nature  and 
all  history,  we  should  behold  all  things  coming 
to  pass  in  one  way,  and  this  one  way  invari- 
able and  inviolable. 

This  scientific  view  of  the  world  is  the  ulti- 
mate source  of  the  discredit  that  has  fallen 
upon  the  miracles  recorded  in  the  Hebrew 
and  Christian  Scriptures.    Christian  scholars 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  23 

have  never,  in  large  numbers,  at  least  in  mod- 
ern times,  believed  in  the  miracles  recorded  in 
connection  with  other  religions.  They  have 
rejected  these  miracles  on  many  grounds,  but 
chiefly  because  the  order  of  the  world  is  against 
them.  Within  a  generation  of  human  life  this 
law  of  logic  has  been  applied  to  the  records 
of  our  own  faith  over  its  entire  field,  and  with 
relentless  vigor.  Independent  scholars,  often 
enough  with  little  religion  of  any  kind,  and 
frequently  without  discernible  sympathy  with 
the  Hebrew  or  the  Christian  religion,  have 
examined,  in  the  scientific  spirit,  our  Bible, 
and  at  every  step  they  have  found  the  record 
of  miracles  mythical  or  legendary,  always  in- 
credible as  fact.  The  point  to  be  noted  is  that 
these  scholars  go  to  their  work  of  criticism 
with  a  fixed  conception  of  what  can  be  and  of 
what  cannot  be.  They  believe  that  miracles  do 
not  occur,  that  they  never  have  occurred,  that 
they  never  will  occur.  They  believe  this  in  the 
name  of  natural  science ;  they  look,  therefore, 
from  the  first  contact  with  them,  upon  all  sto- 
ries of  the  miraculous  as  incredible  and  impos- 


24  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

sible.  In  their  hands,  the  fate  of  the  miracu- 
lous is  a  foregone  conclusion  ;  the  miraculous 
goes  as  the  landslide  goes,  it  falls  as  the  ava- 
lanche falls ;  in  the  order  of  nature  it  could  not 
be  otherwise. 

We  see  at  once  that  this  type  of  mind  is 
full  of  peril.  We  see  at  once  that  it  begs  the 
question  at  issue.  Judgment  is  set,  and  the 
miraculous  is  ruled  out  of  court.  The  ques- 
tion is  not  discussed,  it  is  assumed  as  settled. 
A  general  phase  of  belief  concerning  nature, 
resting  indeed  upon  a  wide  induction  of  facts, 
has  been  asserting  itself  for  centuries.  It  has 
been  gaining  ground ;  it  has  won,  or  thinks  it 
has  won,  the  day.  Miracles  have  gone  because 
the  fashion  of  the  world's  intellect  is  against 
them.  This  fashion  may  be  right,  or  it  may 
be  wrong.  Discussion  alone  can  settle  that 
point,  and  for  the  present  defense  of  the  mi- 
raculous is  considered  either  an  impertinence 
or  an  amusement;  it  is  further  regarded  as 
the  infallible  sign  of  an  uneducated  intellect. 
For  this  very  reason  the  temper  of  the  time  is 
unfortunate. 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  25 

It  is  unfortunate  for  another  reason.  Hu- 
man science  is  strictly  contemporaneous.  It 
lives  in  verified  conceptions ;  and  verification 
is  a  process  carried  on  by  the  living.  Human 
science  is  contemporaneous,  and  its  field  is 
small  at  that.  With  all  possible  reverence  for 
the  high  method  and  the  sure  results  of 
science,  one  may  doubt  whether  it  is  safe  for 
any  man  to  decide  beforehand  what  the  events 
of  all  history  or  any  part  of  it  must  be,  what 
the  possibilities  and  impossibilities  are  over 
the  entire  domain  of  universal  experience. 
Laws  of  logic  hold  against  men  of  faith ;  they 
hold  also  against  men  of  science.  If  things 
are  believed  that  are  more  than  doubtful, 
things  are  denied  where  the  denial  cannot  be 
proved.  There  are  ten  thousand  mysteries 
above,  beneath,  and  round  about  the  clearest 
and  surest  science.  The  fountains  of  being 
are  deep;  many  of  them  are  so  far  past  find- 
ing out ;  and  a  new  face  may  be  put  upon  an 
ancient  faith  by  some  sudden  disclosure  of  the 
law  of  man's  soul.  There  are  more  things  in 
heaven  and  earth  than  are  dreamt  of  in  our 


26  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

philosophy.  And  while  it  is  true  that  one  who 
speaks  in  this  way  is  but  a  voice  crying  in  the 
wilderness,  it  is  right,  if  only  on  the  princi- 
ple that  a  persistent  opposition,  a  Sanballat, 
a  Satan,  is  indispensable  to  all  sure  progress, 
that  the  solitary  voice  should  keep  up  the  cry. 
Intellectual  integrity  is  the  condition  of  the 
integrity  of  knowledge ;  and  intellectual  integ- 
rity belongs,  as  matter  of  course,  to  no  class 
of  thinkers.  When  the  custom  of  thought  is 
all  one  way,  there  is  safety  only  in  the  persist- 
ent challenge  of  the  custom. 

IV 

We  ask,  therefore,  as  our  next  question : 
What  is  the  logical  value  of  the  scientific  con- 
ception of  nature  ?  And  here  the  first  thing 
to  be  said  is  that  antecedent  to  experience  one 
thing  may  as  well  be  as  another.  The  "  Ara- 
bian Nights  "  do  not  strike  the  minds  of  chil- 
dren as  impossible  stories.  Indeed,  to  such 
minds  they  read  like  veritable  history.  The 
magic  feats  of  Aladdin's  lamp  meet  with  little 
or  no  unbelief,  because  little  or  no  authentic 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  27 

experience  is  brought  to  the  story.  The  im- 
mature mind  does  not  know  what  to  expect; 
one  thing  is  therefore  as  credible  as  another, 
provided  it  be  told  with  equal  vividness  and 
power ;  a  magical  universe  is  as  likely  to  be 
the  fact,  to  a  vacant  mind,  as  a  universe 
severe  and  steadfast  in  its  ways  of  behavior. 
If  the  cosmos  be  supposed  to  be  the  expres- 
sion of  mind,  antecedent  to  experience,  the 
magical  and  the  ordered  cosmos  do  not  indeed 
stand  upon  the  same  level.  Upon  reflection 
the  cosmic  mind  is  not  so  likely  to  be  a  wizard 
as  a  logician,  a  lover  of  surprises  as  a  lover  of 
order.  The  cosmic  mind  is  likely  to  care  for 
something,  and  if  so  to  observe  certain  rules 
in  guarding  the  interests  of  that  something. 
Order  would  seem  to  be  essential  to  mind;  to 
the  good  mind  it  is  without  doubt  essential. 
If,  therefore,  the  cosmic  mind  is  a  good  mind, 
it  goes  without  saying  that  even  antecedent 
to  experience  order  is  more  likely  to  be  its 
general  method  of  expression.  So  much  must 
be  said  in  qualification  of  the  statement  to 
be  made  that  before  the  determinations  of 


28  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

experience  order  or  disorder,  law  or  magic, 
method  or  madness,  may  be  the  fact.  Experi- 
ence comes  in  to  help  the  mind  in  its  expecta- 
tions ;  experience  tells  us  what  is,  and  upon 
what  is  we  infer  what  has  been,  we  predict 
what  will  be.  We  find  that  fire  burns,  that 
water  at  a  certain  temperature  becomes  ice, 
that  in  our  latitude  there  are  in  the  year  an 
equal  number  of  days  and  nights  of  unequal 
lengths,  and  from  this  experience  we  infer 
that  such  has  been  the  case  always,  we  predict 
that  this  order  will  remain  to  the  end  of  time. 
The  uniformity  of  nature  is  an  assumption 
from  partial  experience  for  all  experience 
actual  and  possible. 

The  uniformity  of  nature  is  an  assumption. 
It  is  an  assumption  to  which  man  is  incapable 
of  giving  complete  verification.  Verification, 
it  must  be  observed,  is  made  by  the  living ; 
when  the  verifications  of  preceding  genera- 
tions of  men  are  taken,  they  are  taken  on  au- 
thority ;  even  when  these  verifications  of  men 
in  past  ages  are  re-verified  by  the  living,  in 
strict  logic  we  are  not  able  to  say  that  former 


THE  ISSUE   DEFINED  29 

generations  were  exact  in  their  method  and 
result.  Only  the  Infinite  mind  knows  whether 
or  not  the  assumption  of  the  uniformity  of 
nature  is  valid.  The  mind  that  would  suffi- 
ciently attest  the  idea  of  uniformity  must 
know  absolutely  the  entire  history  of  the  cos- 
mos in  relation  to  man,  must  know,  too,  the 
law  that  insures,  for  all  time  to  come,  an  invio- 
lable order.  Scientific  thinkers  of  eminence 
recognize  fully  that  the  uniformity  of  nature 
is  an  assumption  to  which  man  is  incapable  of 
giving  complete  attestation.  Dogmatic  denial 
of  miracle  on  the  ground  of  natural  law  can- 
not, therefore,  be  justified  by  logic.  No  man 
knows  enough  to  be  able  to  make  good  the 
denial.  No  man  knows  enough  to  be  warranted 
in  the  statement  that  miracle  has  never  oc- 
curred in  the  history  of  man  and  the  cosmos. 
Therefore  the  dogmatic  negative  is  excluded 
from  sure  thinking  and  valid  conclusions  on 
this  subject. 

Still  it  must  be  added  that  the  uniformity 
of  nature  is  a  reasonable  assumption.  It  is  rea- 
sonable because  ordinary  experience  justifies 


30  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

it,  ordinary  mortals  find  the  ways  of  nature  in- 
variable and  sure.  We  take  a  walk  in  the  coun- 
try and  find  essentially  the  same  conditions 
—  a  stable  earth,  air  that  may  be  breathed. 
Mining,  farming,  navigation,  all  forms  of  in- 
dustry depend  upon  order  in  nature,  and  they 
find  that  order  sure.  The  cultivation  of  the 
farm  is  set  in  the  great  uniform  method  of 
nature ;  the  heart  of  the  earth  opens  its  trea- 
sure under  the  operation  of  law.  The  sea  amid 
all  its  wild  changes  serves  the  navigator  with 
a  constant  character.  Ordinary  experience  is  a 
record  of  the  uniform  ways  of  the  great  world 
in  which  we  live,  and  upon  these  uniform 
ways  we  build  and  rejoice.  Science  takes  this 
result  of  ordinary  experience  and  verifies  it  by 
observation  and  experiment  over  the  entire 
domain  of  exact  knowledge ;  so  far  as  science 
goes,  it  finds  nature  uniform  in  its  behavior. 
Since  this  conception  of  the  uniformity  of  na- 
ture is  uncontradicted  over  the  entire  field  of 
experiment,  both  ordinary  and  scientific,  it  is 
reasonable  to  believe  that  it  is  an  uncontra- 
dicted conception  over  the  whole  range  of  cos- 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  31 

mic  history  in  relation  to  man.  This  belief 
about  the  uniformity  of  nature  is  reasonable, 
but  it  is  not  certain.  We  are  led  by  contem- 
poraneous experience  to  believe  in  the  invari- 
able order  of  nature  for  all  experience,  but  we 
cannot  prove  that  absolute,  invariable  order. 
The  antecedent  improbability  of  miracle 
reduces  itself  to  the  contest  between  general 
experience  and  special  experience.  Quantity  is 
surely  against  miracle.  Is  the  quality  of  expe- 
rience likewise  against  miracle?  Here  men 
will  differ  in  their  judgment.  The  testimony 
of  the  eye-witness  of  the  miracles  recorded  in 
the  Gospels  will  seem  to  some  superior,  to 
other  judges  inferior,  to  the  general  testimony 
of  mankind.  The  persons  who  deem  the  testi- 
mony of  the  apostles  of  Jesus  superior  to  the 
general  verdict,  or  who  hold  that  the  testi- 
mony is  superior  when  taken  in  connection 
with  the  character  of  the  Prophet  of  whom  it 
bears  witness,  are  usually  men  who  believe  in 
the  flexibility  of  nature.  Usually  they  are  per- 
sons with  a  slight  sense  of  natural  law  and  a 
high  sense  of  the  Supreme  Being  whose  will  is 


32  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

expressed  in  natural  law.  These  persons  allow 
ideas  to  influence  evidence;  they  hold  that 
nature  may  be  moved  by  the  will  of  God  or 
by  the  ambassador  of  God  as  the  curtain  is 
swayed  by  the  wind,  that  nature  may  be  in- 
clined this  way  or  that  as  the  sail  is  bent  by 
the  breeze.  Minds  of  this  order  are  less  in- 
fluenced by  the  testimony  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment record  than  by  their  own  ideas.  For  them 
the  miraculous  has  an  extreme  fascination,  a 
weird  and  divine  attraction.  The  miraculous 
world  is  God's  world ;  he  is  the  God  of  signs 
and  wonders ;  religion  itself  is  a  portent,  and 
it  is  set  in  with  portents,  cosmic  and  psychic. 
The  essence  of  existence,  the  essence  of  his- 
tory is  surprise ;  God  himself  is  the  supreme 
surprise,  and  he  is  forever  taking  the  world 
by  surprise. 

To  minds  of  a  sober  cast  all  this  seems 
painfully  unreal.  It  represents  not  the  work 
of  serious  judgment,  but  the  riot  of  an  irre- 
sponsible imagination.  To  minds  possessed 
with  a  profound  sense  of  natural  law,  who 
look  upon  natural  law  as  the  steady  and  sure 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  33 

declaration  of  the  will  of  God,  the  miraculous 
is  an  intrusion  if  not  an  impertinence.  It  is  to 
them  the  beginning  of  confusion.  It  is  the  ini- 
tial endeavor  toward  the  transformation  of  the 
sublime  and  fixed  world  through  which  God 
covenants  with  men  into  the  world  of  magic. 
Therefore  the  testimony  of  the  disciples  of 
Jesus  to  the  miracles  recorded  in  the  Gospels 
meets,  in  such  minds,  a  rooted  antagonism. 
To  them  no  testimony  can  prevail  against  an 
order  that  living  men  have  never  known  to  be 
violated.  The  result  to  which  we  are  thus 
brought  is  that,  while  the  denial  of  miracles 
cannot  be  logically  sustained,  the  reality  of 
miracles  is  unlikely.  Miracles  are  logical  pos- 
sibilities and  natural  improbabilities. 


This  brings  me  to  the  third  question: 
What  help  may  we  expect  from  the  principle 
of  verification  in  the  endeavor  to  ascertain  the 
truth  of  our  historic  Christianity?  Here  it 
must  be  said  that  our  historic  faith  divides 
itself  into  two  great  departments,  —  the  verifi- 


34  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

able  and  the  un verifiable.  This  broad  distinc- 
tion between  that  in  our  faith  which  is  verifi- 
able and  that  which  is  not  open  to  verification 
will  be  generally  admitted  as  sound.  We  do  not 
put  in  the  same  category  the  statement  that  Je- 
sus at  the  wedding  in  Cana  of  Galilee  turned 
water  into  wine  and  his  great  words,  "  I  am  the 
light  of  the  world :  he  that  f olloweth  me  shall 
not  walk  in  the  darkness,  but  shall  have  the 
light  of  life."1  The  statement  about  the  turn- 
ing of  the  water  into  wine  we  cannot  verify ;  if 
we  believe  it,  we  do  so  on  the  authority  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel.  The  statement  that  Jesus  is 
the  light  of  the  world,  and  that  whoever  follows 
him  shall  not  walk  in  darkness,  but  shall  have 
the  light  of  life,  is  open  to  verification.  Experi- 
ence alone  can  determine  whether  the  statement 
is  or  is  not  true.  There  can  be,  therefore,  no  dif- 
ference of  opinion  concerning  the  validity  of 
the  distinction  between  the  verifiable  and  the 
unverifiable  in  our  Christian  faith ;  there  will 
be  some  difference  of  opinion  concerning  what 
should  be  placed  in  the  one  category  and  what 

1  John  viii,  12. 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  35 

should  be  placed  in  the  other.  It  may  not  be 
always  easy  to  determine  what  is  and  what  is 
not  open  to  verification. 

It  does  not  follow  that  what  is  unverifiable 
is  therefore  untrue.  All  that  follows  is  simply 
this,  that  where  a  belief  is  not  open  to  verifi- 
cation we  cannot  hope  to  gain  any  measure  of 
certainty  about  its  truth.  For  example,  let  us 
take  this  statement  from  the  Fourth  Gospel : f 
u  Jesus  therefore,  being  wearied  with  his  jour- 
ney, sat  thus  by  the  well.,,  It  seems  to  me  quite 
impossible  from  this  statement  to  know  how 
Jesus  sat  or  where  he  sat.  The  statement  is 
too  indefinite  for  definite  and  sure  belief ;  then 
again  if  it  had  been  definite,  we  could  have 
arrived  at  no  certainty  regarding  it,  because  it 
is  inaccessible  to  sure  tests.  It  may  be  said  that 
it  is  of  no  consequence  how  or  where  he  sat,  his 
conversation  with  the  woman  at  the  well  is  the 
essential  thing.  I  agree  to  this,  but  I  must  add 
that  precisely  the  same  ground  may  be  taken 
with  regard  to  all  in  the  life  of  Jesus  and  all  in 
our  historic  faith  that  is  not  subject  to  verifica- 

1  John  iv,  6. 


36  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

tion.  Still  I  repeat  that  because  a  belief  is  un- 
verifiable  it  does  not  follow  that  it  is  untrue ; 
it  only  follows  that  we  cannot  be  sure  about  it. 
It  is  not  necessary  that  belief  should  be 
limited  to  the  verifiable.  Luther  thought  that 
Apollos  wrote  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  and 
others  have  entertained  the  same  opinion. 
There  is  no  reason  why  a  scholar  should  not 
entertain  this  opinion  if  he  sees  fit.  Still,  if  he 
is  a  sane  scholar,  we  expect  him  to  admit  that 
his  belief  is  among  the  things  that  cannot  be 
verified,  that  Origen  is  on  safe  ground  when 
he  affirms  that  God  alone  knows  who  wrote 
the  Epistle  in  question.  This  line  of  reasoning 
holds  over  the  entire  field  of  Biblical  history. 
The  reconstruction  of  the  history  of  Israel  in 
modern  scholarship  has  so  much  to  say  for 
itself  that  we  accept  it  as  probably  true.  It 
is  more  likely  to  be  true  than  the  traditional 
view ;  and  where  the  exact  state  of  the  case 
can  never  be  surely  known,  probabilities  count. 
In  historical  investigation  probability  is  the 
guide  to  life;  and  yet  the  result  attained  is 
a  belief  founded  indeed  upon  evidence,  but 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  37 

unverifiable  in  the  nature  of  the  case.  It  is 
unlikely  that  Isaiah  of  Jerusalem  wrote  the 
exilic  prophecy  contained  in  chapters  forty  to 
sixty-six  inclusive.  It  is  far  more  likely  that 
another  prophet  wrote  the  larger  part  of  these 
prophetic  words ;  but  again  certainty  is  out 
of  the  question.  When  it  comes  to  Cheyne's 
method  of  cutting  up  Isaiah  into  a  pack  of 
cards,  and  coloring  the  cards  according  to  the 
periods  in  which  they  originated,  scholarship 
has  foresworn  science  and  taken  up  the  trick 
of  the  juggler.  I  admit  that  the  juggler  has 
his  rights  so  long  as  he  admits  the  purely  sub- 
jective value  of  his  feats. 

The  fact  is,  among  all  men,  belief  extends 
far  into  the  region  of  the  unverifiable.  No- 
thing can  be  said  against  this  extension  even 
in  its  wildest  form  so  long  as  it  is  clearly  un- 
derstood to  be  what  it  is,  a  guess,  a  divination 
with  the  world  for  or  against  it.  Still  less 
should  we  object  when  the  scholar  works  in 
this  vast  region  of  the  strictly  unverifiable  by 
rigorous  scientific  method.  Let  him  gather  all 
available  facts ;  let  him  sift  and  test  his  facts 


38  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

by  every  known  scientific  device ;  let  him  rea- 
son from  them  in  logical  order,  and  let  him 
state  his  conclusion  with  all  the  strength  al- 
lowed by  the  probabilities  of  the  case,  and  we 
shall  thank  him.  He  has  not  given  us  certainty 
because  in  the  nature  of  the  case  that  is  im- 
possible. He  has  given  us  a  likely,  a  probable, 
and  a  fruitful  result,  and  we  are  thankful  for 
so  much. 

While  it  does  not  follow  that  the  unverifi- 
able  is  untrue,  or  that  belief  should  be  limited 
to  the  verifiable,  it  is  clear  that  the  un verifi- 
able can  never  remain  an  essential  part  of  a 
reasonable  faith.  Therefore  it  is  unreasonable 
when  men  impose  upon  one  another  in  one 
un  distinguishable  mass  both  that  which  is 
open  to  verification  and  that  which  is  not. 
Such  a  crude  compound  is  the  traditional  or- 
thodoxy of  the  world.  What  a  man  holds  by 
the  dead  strength  of  mere  belief  is  as  far  as 
the  east  is  from  the  west  from  that  which  he 
holds  as  verified  in  the  life  of  his  spirit.  We 
conclude,  therefore,  that  all  in  the  life  of  Je- 
sus and  his  apostles  that  is  open  to  verification 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  39 

to-day  stands  in  an  entirely  different  category 
from  all  in  his  career  and  in  that  of  his  apostles 
which  cannot  be  tested  here  and  now  in  the 
courses  of  experience.  I  contend  that  a  rea- 
sonable faith  will  note  this  distinction  and 
build  upon  it.  I  contend  that  a  reasonable 
faith  will  put  small  stress  upon  the  unverifi- 
able,  and  that  it  will  stake  its  life  upon  the 
verifiable  and  sure. 

History  has  two  sides,  one  factual,  the  other 
ideal.  In  regard  to  these  two  sides  of  history 
we  ask  two  distinct  and  different  questions.  In 
regard  to  facts  we  ask,  Did  they  occur?  In 
regard  to  ideas  we  ask,  Are  they  true?  The 
alleged  facts  of  history  are  of  two  kinds 
—  natural  and  miraculous.  Even  where  the 
alleged  facts  are  natural,  scholars  are  often 
unable  to  arrive  at  an  affirmative  conclusion 
respecting  them.  Whether  the  migration  of 
Abraham  is  fact  or  legend,  whether  Abraham, 
Isaac,  and  Jacob  are  historical  or  mythical 
persons,  are  questions  that  many  scholars  find 
themselves  unable  to  answer.  The  number  of 
these  alleged  facts  concerning  which  no  de- 


40  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

cisive  probability  may  be  had  that  they  are 
real,  is  very  great.  History  is  but  a  poor  rem- 
nant of  a  vanished  world-life.  This  remnant 
divides  itself  into  the  more  or  less  likely  or 
unlikely.  Part  even  of  this  remnant  must  be 
ruled  out  as  probably  unauthentic.  Part  is  re- 
tained whose  authenticity  is  more  or  less  open 
to  question.  Still  another  part  is  accepted  on 
the  ground  of  a  strong  probability  in  its  favor; 
the  most  authentic  of  mere  historical  facts 
rests  on  nothing  surer  than  high  probability. 
As  examples,  take  the  conquest  of  Palestine 
under  Joshua,  the  Peloponnesian  war,  the  mili- 
tary career  of  Hannibal,  the  strictly  external 
history  of  Jesus,  the  missionary  journeys  of 
Paul.  The  alleged  facts  here  are  of  four  or- 
ders :  first  incredible,  second  credible  but 
questionable,  third  probable,  fourth  of  high 
probability. 

If  this  is  the  state  of  the  case,  why  are  we 
so  sure  that  Napoleon,  Washington,  Crom- 
well, William  of  Orange,  Frederick  the  Great, 
Charlemagne,  Caesar,  and  Pericles  lived  ?  Be- 
cause the  facts  were  conjoined  with  ideas, 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  41 

modified  life,  continued  to  do  so  for  long  pe- 
riods of  time,  and  because  without  these  per- 
sons no  rational  account  can  be  given  of  the 
civilization  of  their  respective  peoples.  When 
it  comes  to  Socrates  and  to  Paul,  probability 
becomes  moral  certainty.  No  sane  mind  ques- 
tions the  traditional  view.  Without  the  his- 
toric Socrates,  Greek  philosophy  is  an  enigma ; 
without  the  historic  Paul,  imperial  Christian- 
ity is  inexplicable.  Facts  conjoined  with  ideas 
acquired  such  momentum  in  the  life  of  the 
world  that  their  rejection  becomes  a  mark  of 
insanity.  So  we  judge  the  historic  Jesus.  On 
the  basis  of  mere  historical  fact  he  is  open  to 
the  question  by  which  every  alleged  fact  is 
confronted.  In  him  fact  and  idea  unite  and 
change  the  course  of  the  world's  life,  and  to 
doubt  his  historical  reality  is  to-day  simply  in- 
dication of  a  pathological  state  of  mind.  Still 
it  must  be  repeated  that  mere  fact,  even  when 
it  is  natural  fact,  can  attest  itself  by  nothing 
stronger  than  probability. 

When  the  alleged  facts  are  miraculous,  the 
question,  Did  they  occur?  is  a  much  harder 


42  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

one.  Other  questions  come  in,  such  as  For 
what  end  did  thej  take  place  ?  By  whom  are 
they  attested  ?  Is  the  attestation  that  of  an 
eye-witness  or  tradition?  How  far  were  the 
witnesses  and  reporters  influenced  by  the  gen- 
eral belief  in  the  miraculous?  How  does  this  ex- 
ceptional and  limited  human  experience  stand 
against  the  solemn  general  experience  of  man- 
kind ?  Such  questions  set  before  one  the  im- 
possibility of  attaining  anything  like  certainty 
in  regard  to  miracle  at  its  best,  —  miracle  in 
the  evangelical  record.  It  must  therefore  be 
placed  in  the  category  of  the  unverifiable.  It 
is  not  on  that  account  necessarily  untrue,  but 
its  truth  is  not  open  to  attestation. 

When  we  come  to  ideas,  to  the  great  ideas 
of  the  Christian  faith,  the  case  is  different. 
We  ask,  Are  they  true  ?  But  we  do  not  go 
two  thousand  years  into  history  in  order  to 
begin  the  answer  to  that  question.  These  ideas 
are  both  historic  and  contemporaneous.  They 
are  historic,  and  yet  they  are  independent  of 
history.  They  offer  themselves  to-day,  as  if  it 
were  the  first  flush  in  the  dawning  morning 


THE  ISSUE  DEFINED  43 

of  time,  to  the  lives  of  men  to  be  tested  there. 
Our  God  is  still  a  present  help  in  time  of 
need ;  our  Lord  is  the  living  Lord  moving  in 
the  hearts  of  living  men.  The  kingdom  of 
love  is  verified  only  in  part,  but  it  looms  be- 
fore men,  inspiring  them  in  the  great  process 
of  verification.  Eternal  life  is  human  exist- 
ence raised  to  excellence,  and  because  of  that 
excellence  full  of  the  hope  of  immortality. 

Even  in  the  sphere  of  ideas,  we  must  recall 
Kant's  distinction,  while  we  decline  to  be 
bound  by  his  use  of  it.  Certain  ideas  are  in- 
capable of  verification  because  they  are  in  a 
region  beyond  all  possible  human  experience. 
How  did  God  spend  the  eternity  before  the 
creation  of  the  cosmos  and  the  advent  of  man? 
What  is  the  secret  history  of  the  Eternal  mind? 
How  do  the  spirits  of  just  men  made  perfect 
live?  How  does  the  purely  spiritual  world 
subsist?  What  becomes  of  this  world  of  sense 
for  the  disembodied  spirit?  These  questions 
are,  for  human  beings,  unanswerable.  They 
are  unanswerable  because  they  are  in  a  region 
in  which,  while  we  remain  men,  we  can  have 


44  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

no  experience  whatever.  They  relate  to  things 
beyond  all  possible  human  experience,  and  one 
judgment  about  them  is  as  good  as  another, 
because  all  judgments  are  worthless.  We 
may  dream  our  dream  upon  such  things,  and 
so  long  as  we  do  not  mistake  our  dream  for  a 
verified  idea,  it  will  do  us  no  harm  and  may  do 
us  good. 

Much  in  the  theological  tradition  of  the 
Christian  faith  is  unverifiable  because  as  idea 
it  lies  outside  the  sphere  of  all  possible  human 
experience.  That  in  Christian  faith  which  is 
sure  and  mighty  is  the  verifiable.  We  may  test 
our  Christian  ideas  of  God,  the  grace  of  God, 
the  efficacy  of  prayer,  the  possible  sover- 
eignty of  the  spirit  in  man  over  the  flesh, 
the  brotherhood  of  man,  the  kingdom  of  love, 
the  worth  of  Jesus  Christ  for  the  moral  ideal- 
ist of  to-day.  Out  of  this  vast  experimental 
process  Christianity  is  in  each  generation  born 
anew ;  and  it  is  this  contemporaneous,  attested, 
sure  Christianity  to  which  belongs  the  empire 
of  the  world. 


CHAPTER  II 

BELIEF    IN    GOD   AND    MIRACLE 


MORE  and  more  the  view  prevails  among 
educated  people  that  miracles  are  no 
part  of  genuine  history.  The  opinion  prevails 
that  at  this  point  the  Christian  religion  does 
not  differ  from  other  religions.  The  miracu- 
lous element,  so  it  is  more  and  more  widely 
held,  is  the  constant  and  spurious  accompani- 
ment, in  ancient  times,  of  every  great  religious 
movement.  To-day, this  element  does  not  count; 
it  is  widely  rejected;  it  is  still  more  widely 
disregarded.  Face  to  face  with  the  movement 
which  threatens  to  sweep  the  miraculous  from 
the  reasonable  beliefs  of  mankind,  it  is  perti- 
nent to  ask,  How  much  will  thus  be  lost  to 
faith  ?  How  much  will  survive  the  storm  and 
abide? 

If  the  mechanism  of  cause  and  effect  is 


46  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

made  to  cover  the  entire  field  of  human  expe- 
rience, if  all  human  things  and  thoughts  are 
under  the  reign  of  fixed  law,  is  there  room  for 
spirit  in  the  cosmos  or  in  man  ?  The  sovereign 
interest  of  human  life  centres  in  the  existence 
and  character  of  God.  If  there  is  no  God,  there 
can  be,  in  the  full  meaning  of  the  word,  no  re- 
ligion. If  God  exists,  but  exists  without  regard 
to  man,  again  religion,  in  the  full  and  happy 
sense  of  the  term,  is  an  impossibility.  The  be- 
ing and  character  of  God  are  thus  the  sovereign 
object  and  interest  of  faith;  and  the  being 
and  character  of  God  are  bound  up  with  the 
ways  in  which  he  reveals  that  being  and  char- 
acter. Therefore  we  may  say  that  God,  and 
God  in  the  Christian  vision  of  his  attitude 
toward  man,  are  the  citadel  of  our  faith.  What- 
ever threatens  these,  threatens  our  religion ; 
whatever  leaves  these  entire  and  untroubled, 
means  little  or  nothing  to  enlightened  men  in 
its  otherwise  destructive  course.  Our  discus- 
sion revolves  about  these  three  fundamental 
questions :  In  what  way  is  belief  in  God  af- 
fected by  the  denial  of  miracle  ?   How  does  it 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  47 

fare  with  Jesus  Christ  if  the  miraculous  in  the 
evangelical  record  is  regarded  as  unreal  ?  Is 
the  Christian  life  harassed  or  injured  seriously 
by  disregard  for  miracle?  These  questions 
will  be  discussed  in  the  order  stated,  and  I 
begin  with  the  consideration  of  the  relation  of 
belief  in  God  to  miracle. 

H 

God  is  the  life  and  light  and  consolation  of 
the  world,  and  it  is  clear  that  his  existence  is 
independent  of  miracle.  He  is  the  indispens- 
able antecedent  of  all  miracle  and  of  all  mech- 
anism. The  miraculous  means  the  contradic- 
tion of  the  customary  order  of  the  world,  as 
when  the  axe  is  said  to  come  from  the  bed 
of  the  Jordan  to  its  surface  at  the  call  of  the 
prophet.  Mechanism  means  the  customary 
order  of  the  world  regarded  as  invariable  and 
inviolable,  as  in  the  statement,  "  Whatsoever 
a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap" ;  wheat 
comes  from  wheat,  barley  from  barley,  tares 
from  tares.  The  miraculous  is  the  extraordi- 
nary and  the  mechanical  the  ordinary  way  of 


48  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

bringing  things  to  pass.  Both  refer  the  mind 
to  an  indispensable  antecedent.  The  ante- 
cedent of  all  life,  of  all  change,  of  the  entire 
world  in  space  and  time  is  the  Eternal  God. 
No  matter  what  the  mode  of  their  production 
may  be,  all  events,  all  results,  all  finite  beings 
refer  themselves  to  the  one  sovereign  source : 
"  For  every  house  is  build  ed  by  some  one ; 
but  he  that  built  all  things  is  God." 

If,  therefore,  there  is  any  truth  in  miracle,  it 
is  as  the  witness  of  God ;  if  there  is  any  mean- 
ing in  mechanism,  it  is  as  the  revelation  of 
his  will.  The  Nile  divides  into  two  rivers  at 
the  Delta,  but  whichever  stream  one  takes,  it 
brings  him  to  the  same  sea.  If  we  choose  to 
regard  the  operation  of  the  cosmos  as  dividing 
into  two  methods,  one  the  miraculous  and  the 
other  the  mechanical,  it  must  be  added  that 
both  conduct  to  the  same  goal ;  the  terminus 
of  all  things  is  God. 

If  there  is  no  such  thing  as  miracle,  it  does 
not  follow  that  there  is  no  such  being  as  God. 
God  is  not  thus  dependent  upon  miracle  for 
the  declaration  of   his  will.    The  extremest 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  49 

champion  of  the  miraculous  would  not  claim 
that  if  miracle  is  untrue,  God  is  unreal.  The 
fading  of  miracle,  therefore,  from  the  field 
of  faith  does  not  mean  the  vanishing  of  God 
from  the  life  of  the  world. 

One  might  with  some  reason  advance  this 
position  of  indifference.  One  might  contend 
that  the  cosmos,  operated  as  an  order  invari- 
able and  inviolable,  is  the  better  witness  for 
God.  Reasonable  men  do  not  work  by  hap- 
hazard, they  work  by  plan ;  the  expression  of 
mind  in  any  sphere  of  human  life  is  the  ex- 
pression of  a  plan;  the  highest  work  of  art 
means  the  completest  expression  of  the  best 
design.  If  the  physical  organism  of  man  is  an 
expression  of  indwelling  mind,  the  expression 
is  completer  and  more  impressive  in  proportion 
to  the  invariable  order  disclosed.  If  the  cos- 
mos is  the  embodiment  and  expression  of  cos- 
mic mind,  the  invariable  order  of  the  cosmos 
would  seem  to  be  the  higher  evidence  of  the 
reasonableness  of  the  impelling  mind.  We 
should  be  put  to  utter  confusion  if  we  could 
not  count  upon  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  tide, 


50  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

the  succession  of  day  and  night,  the  invariable 
sequences  of  the  seasons,  the  inviolable  opera- 
tion of  cause  and  effect.  In  such  a  universe  we 
should  never  know  what  to  expect.  We  should 
be  unable  to  adjust  ourselves  to  the  crazy 
world.  There  could  be  no  science  in  such  a 
world ;  for  the  foundation  of  science  is  order. 
There  could  be  no  prevision  in  life;  for  pre- 
vision depends  upon  the  uniform  movement 
in  nature.  Such  a  cosmos  would  be  like  an  in- 
sane asylum ;  instead  of  one  sovereign,  steady, 
trustworthy  mind,  we  should  have,  at  best  or 
at  worst  as  one  chooses  to  name  it,  a  collec- 
tion of  conflicting  minds,  bound  together  by 
the  tie  of  madness.  A  miraculous  universe,  in 
the  sense  of  a  universe  uncontrolled  by  law, 
would  be,  for  a  reasonable  man  aiming  at  true 
vision  and  right  behavior,  the  supreme  calam- 
ity. He  would  be  at  a  loss  to  know  what  to 
think  or  what  to  do ;  indeed,  in  such  a  uni- 
verse there  could  be  neither  truth  nor  right. 
Eternal  surprise  would  then  seem  to  be  the 
essence  of  existence,  and  eternal  suspense  the 
sorrow  of  man.  Pandora's  box  open,  with  hope 


BELIEF  IN  GOD   AND   MIRACLE  61 

gone,  and  infinite  plagues  afflicting  men, 
would  be  the  only  proper  symbol  for  such  a 
chaos  of  things  and  beings. 

We  must  not  forget  that  the  ancient  word 
cosmos,  and  the  modern  word  universe,  have 
come  to  us  through  the  observed  order  of  ex- 
istence. Facts  have  been  unified  in  laws ;  laws 
of  inferior  range  have  been  taken  up  into 
those  of  higher  range ;  all  things  and  all  be- 
ings have  been  regarded  as  forming  one  whole 
because  of  the  omnipresence  of  order;  and 
the  universe  has  found  its  being  and  home  in 
the  will  of  God.  Existences  as  ordered,  as  an- 
swerable to  law,  as  forming  one  sublime  whole, 
as  gathered  into  the  boundless  universe  which 
rests  in  the  sovereign  intelligent  Will,  become 
the  living,  harmonious  witnesses  for  him  whose 
mind  constitutes  them,  and  whose  will  supplies 
them  power.  The  story  of  the  rainbow  that 
appeared  to  Noah  after  the  flood  is  the  Bib- 
lical illustration  of  the  relief  that  man  finds 
in  escape  from  an  uncertain  world  into  one 
sane  and  sure.  The  world  of  the  flood  is  the 
world  of  miracle ;  and  even  to  the  surviving 


52  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

Patriarch  and  his  family  it  was  not  a  wholly 
satisfactory  place.  The  bow  in  the  heavens 
was  God's  covenant  with  Noah,  that  hereafter 
order  should  prevail,  that  nature  should  no 
more  run  wild,  that  seed-time  and  harvest, 
summer  and  winter,  should  no  more  fail.  As 
often  as  man  beheld  that  form  of  resplendent 
loveliness  spanning  the  heavens, — the  triumph 
of  light  in  darkness  and  in  tempest, — he  was 
to  think  of  God's  covenant  with  man  in  the 
order  of  the  world.  That  order,  so  universal, 
so  inviolable,  so  truly  the  condition  of  all 
science  and  all  reasonable  conduct,  so  sure  as 
the  platform  of  life,  and  so  sublime  as  the 
field  of  intellectual  vision,  deserves  to  be  called 
God's  covenant  with  man.  If  we  call  it  mech- 
anism, we  need  not  deny  that  it  is  pervaded 
with  mind;  if  we  say  that  existence  is  a  wheel, 
we  may  assert  that  in  the  wheel  is  spirit. 
Every  wheel  is  dead  until  the  power  of  move- 
ment is  given  it  from  some  living  thing.  The 
wheels  receive  their  power  from  the  horse,  the 
horse  is  subject  to  the  reins,  the  reins  are  in 
the  hands  of  a  man,  and  therefore  in  the 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  53 

wheels  of  his  machine  the  spirit  of  the  man 
lives.  That  is  the  issue  of  a  true  conception  of 
mechanism.  The  universe  of  things  is  a  vast 
wheel.  To  whatever  powers  in  the  way  of  in- 
termediate causes  it  is  fastened,  the  final  source 
of  movement  is  the  Supreme  Mind.  If  we  fig- 
ure the  universe  in  its  mechanical  character 
as  an  infinite  sun-chariot,  if  we  look  to  the 
glorious  steeds  for  power  to  turn  the  flaming 
wheels,  we  must  not  pause  there :  we  must 
carry  our  vision  onward  through  bit  and  rein 
to  the  god  who  drives.  A  mechanical  universe 
thus  turns  out  to  be  a  divine  universe ;  a  me- 
chanical universe  becomes  an  auroral  universe, 
with  the  Eternal  Spirit  in  the  wheels. 

in 

Let  us  look  into  the  Bible  and  note  what 
may  be  learned  there  touching  the  relation  of 
belief  in  God  and  miracle.  Limiting  our  view 
in  the  first  place  to  the  Old  Testament,  we 
shall,  I  think,  be  surprised  to  find  how  largely 
independent  of  miracle  is  the  consciousness 
of  God  enshrined  there.  In  the  great  poem  of 


54  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

creation  with  which  Genesis  opens,  there  is 
no  miracle  till  we  come  to  the  making  of  man ; 
all  is  order,  consecutive  order,  from  the  prim- 
itive darkness  brooded  by  the  Eternal  Spirit 
to  the  fully  developed  cosmos.  Man  is  the 
expression  of  a  creative  act,  but  his  life  is 
normal  after  he  arrives,  and  fits  into  a  normal 
world.  The  exquisite  biographies  in  the  Book 
of  Genesis  were  doubtless  reduced  to  their 
present  form  at  a  late  period.  The  migration 
of  Abraham,  the  spiritual  experiences  of  Jacob, 
and  the  Divine  favor  that  rested  upon  Joseph 
are  conceived,  one  might  almost  say,  in  the 
modern  spirit.  In  the  Exodus  we  come  upon 
a  field  of  miracles;  yet  even  here  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  say  how  much  is  meant  to  be  taken  as 
history  and  how  much  as  poetry.  The  Exodus 
reads  like  an  epic  poem,  the  epic  of  the  deliv- 
erance of  Israel  from  Egyptian  bondage,  and 
their  fortunes  on  the  way  to  the  land  of  prom- 
ise. The  vision  of  God  attributed  to  Moses  is 
indeed  here  and  there  accompanied  by  signs 
and  wonders;  but,  again,  one  is  never  sure 
that  these  are  not  the  poetry  into  which  inef- 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  55 

fable  experience  gathered  itself.  It  is  clear 
tbat  the  vision  is  separable  from  the  miracle ; 
for  to  him  for  whom  all  these  stories  of  manna 
and  quails,  dividing  of  the  Red  Sea,  pillars 
of  cloud  by  day  and  pillars  of  fire  by  night, 
are  myths,  legends,  or  symbols,  the  vision  of 
God  abides.  An  ineffable  experience  shines 
through  all  these  stories,  and  survives  in  its 
own  strength  when  they  are  no  longer  credible. 
When  we  come  to  the  wisdom-literature  of 
Israel,  we  hear  nothing  of  miracle.  In  Job 
there  is  no  miracle,  if  we  except  the  epilogue ; 
here  there  is  nothing  but  the  sublime  reflection 
of  universal  human  experience  in  God's  world. 
In  Proverbs  and  in  Ecclesiastes  there  is  no 
miracle ;  here  again  there  is  nothing  but  the 
wisdom  which  man  wins  by  work  and  sorrow. 
We  take  the  Book  of  Ruth  as  a  work  of  ima- 
gination founded  upon  fact ;  we  find  it  written 
with  deep  and  touching  fidelity  to  the  order 
of  life  and  death  as  we  know  that  order.  In 
the  story  of  Esther  the  same  general  remark 
may  be  made:  we  see  in  the  ancient  forms  and 
incidents  of  the  story  our  own  ordered  world* 


66  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

For  the  conception  of  one  sovereign  eternal 
mind  as  the  ground  and  ruler  of  the  universe, 
we  are  indebted  to  the  Hebrew  prophets.  The 
universe  as  a  moral  organism  inhabited  by  the 
moral  Deity  is  the  great  bequest  of  Hebrew 
seers.  This  idea  is  brought  out  by  Amos, 
Hosea,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  the  great  pro- 
phet of  the  Exile.  It  is  hardly  true  to  their 
burning  consciousness  of  God  to  call  it  an  idea. 
For  these  men  God  is  eternal  reality.  In  their 
thoughts  and  feelings  and  lives  he  is  the  su- 
preme presence  and  certainty.  In  the  ancient 
world  there  is  nothing  so  impressive  as  the 
triumphant  consciousness  of  God  which  these 
men  bring  into  the  life  of  their  time.  What 
are  miracles  compared  with  this,  —  the  tes- 
timony of  external  wonders  to  this  inward 
divine  wonder?  As  well  might  one  put  the 
staging  on  an  equality  with  the  cathedral. 
Take  the  staging  down  and  put  it  away ;  the 
great  building  stands  in  its  own  right.  Even 
if  true,  miracles  are  external  and  mean,  when 
set  in  the  presence  of  the  blazing  conscious- 
ness of  God  in  which  these  great  souls  live 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  57 

and  work.  The  origin  of  the  whole  higher 
character  and  service  of  Isaiah  is  in  his  vision : 
"In  the  year  that  king  Uzziah  died  I  saw 
the  Lord  sitting  upon  a  throne,  high  and  lifted 
up,  and  his  train  filled  the  temple.  Above  him 
stood  the  seraphim :  each  one  had  six  wings ; 
with  twain  he  covered  his  face,  and  with  twain 
he  covered  his  feet,  and  with  twain  he  did 
fly.  And  one  cried  unto  another,  and  said, 
Holy,  holy,  holy,  is  the  Lord  of  hosts :  the 
whole  earth  is  full  of  his  glory."  '  What  is 
this  but  the  transcendent  form  of  that  which 
comes  to  every  soul  that  would  find  and  ful- 
fill the  end  of  existence  ?  What  is  this  but  the 
splendid  poetic  utterance  of  a  man  who  has 
seen  God  in  the  order  of  the  world  and  above 
and  beyond  it?  What  is  this  but  a  spiritual 
revelation  going  forth  in  its  native  might, 
working  and  resting  in  its  own  high  inde- 
pendence ? 

Jeremiah  is  another  impressive  witness  to 
this  immediateness  and  independence  of  the 
things  of  the  spirit.  There  came  to  him  a  call 

Isaiah  vi,  1-3. 


58  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

from  God ;  it  rang  in  great  tones  through  his 
being;  it  overcame  his  weakness,  his  hesita- 
tion, his  despair.  It  filled  him  with  awe, 
ennobled  him  with  a  sense  of  responsibility, 
turned  him,  timid  as  a  child,  into  an  heroic 
witness  for  the  kingdom  of  God.  It  left  him 
with  no  room  to  doubt  God,  and  with  no  need 
for  the  support  of  miracle.  Indeed,  this  prophet 
stands  for  the  revelation  that  has  been  con- 
fessed to  be  the  inward  and  spiritual  in  a  new 
and  prof ounder  sense.  "Behold,  the  days  come, 
saith  the  Lord,  that  I  will  make  a  new  cove- 
nant with  the  house  of  Israel,  and  with  the 
house  of  Judah :  not  according  to  the  cove- 
nant that  I  made  with  their  fathers  in  the  day 
that  I  took  them  by  the  hand  to  bring  them  out 
of  the  land  of  Egypt.  .  .  .  But  this  is  the  cove- 
nant that  I  will  make  with  the  house  of  Israel 
after  those  days,  saith  the  Lord ;  I  will  put  my 
law  in  their  inward  parts,  and  in  their  heart  will 
I  write  it ;  and  I  will  be  their  God,  and  they 
shall  be  my  people :  and  they  shall  teach  no 
more  every  man  his  neighbor,  and  every  man 
his  brother,  saying,  Know  the  Lord  :  for  they 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  59 

shall  all  know  me,  from  the  least  of  them  unto 
the  greatest  of  them,  saith  the  Lord :  for  I 
will  forgive  their  iniquity,  and  their  sin  will 
I  remember  no  more." *  These  great  words  are 
the  herald  of  the  gospel  of  Christ ;  they  lay 
open  to  the  heart  the  eternal  nature  of  religion ; 
they  show  it  to  be  a  vital  and  righteous  life 
in  the  full  communion  of  the  soul  with  God. 
They  show  it  to  be  wholly  independent  of  mir- 
acle, traveling  in  the  greatness  of  its  strength, 
and  mighty  for  the  spirit  and  the  society  in 
whom  it  truly  lives. 

If  we  look  at  Ezekiel,  we  find  him  with  vi- 
sions of  God,  among  the  captives,  by  the  river 
Chebar.  The  word  of  God  was  spoken  to  his 
spirit;  it  became  his  burden,  his  message  to 
his  people.  Again  the  prophet  is  the  man  of 
God,  the  seer  with  an  original  and  vital  vision 
of  the  Eternal  for  his  own  people  and  time ; 
and  his  address  is  to  the  souls  of  men  in  the 
name  and  grace  of  the  Infinite  soul. 

The  prophet  Amos  is  another  great  repre- 
sentative of  spiritual  religion.  Society  in  his 

1  Jeremiah  xxxi,  31-34. 


60  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

time  was  a  wild  welter  of  sin  and  shame;  yet 
in  the  tides  of  that  terrible  social  life  Amos 
beheld  and  announced  God.  He  saw  that  in 
the  moral  retribution  in  society,  in  the  courses 
of  retributive  justice,  the  eternal  conscience 
comes  to  a  tremendous  apocalypse.  Carlyle 
said  that  his  study  of  the  French  Revolution 
convinced  him  of  the  presence  of  God  in  the 
affairs  of  men  and  nations;  from  that  lurid 
drama  he  learned  that  no  sinner  and  no  society 
of  sinners  shall  go  unpunished,  that  an  eter- 
nal nemesis  waits  upon  injustice  and  inhuman- 
ity, and  that  up  from  the  wild  whirlpools  of 
woe  and  death  comes  the  vindication  of  the 
moral  order  of  the  world.  In  the  same  spirit, 
Amos,  looking  upon  the  black  iniquities  of  his 
time,  discovers  the  avenging  presence  of  the 
Infinite  justice  :  "  Though  they  dig  into  hell, 
thence  shall  mine  hand  take  them ;  and  though 
they  climb  up  to  heaven,  thence  will  I  bring 
them  down.  And  though  they  hide  themselves 
in  the  top  of  Carmel,  I  will  search  and  take 
them  out  thence;  and  though  they  be  hid 
from  my  sight  in  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  thence 


BELIEF  IN  GOD   AND  MIRACLE  61 

will  I  command  the  serpent,  and  tie  shall  bite 
them."1 

On  the  other  hand,  we  have  in  Hosea  a  rev- 
elation of  God  through  the  merciful  tides  in 
the  human  heart.  Here  is  a  unique  book  em- 
bodying a  unique  and  a  gracious  vision.  There 
are  in  society  and  in  history  not  only  courses 
of  retributive  justice,  but  also  tides  of  eternal 
compassion  and  forgiveness.  The  moral  order 
is  in  the  hands  of  the  Infinite  Father  of  men, 
and  the  stern  discipline  through  which  the 
sinful  soul  and  nation  are  made  to  pass  is  all 
in  the  interest  of  an  ultimate  repentance,  for- 
giveness, and  redemption.  Here  again  the  char- 
acter of  God  is  read  not  out  of  miracle,  but 
out  of  the  heart  of  the  moral  world  in  man. 

In  the  second  Isaiah  this  vision  of  God  in 
the  courses  of  national  woe  and  redemption  is 
wrought  out  with  a  richness  of  insight  and 
with  a  majesty  of  eloquence  to  which  I  think 
there  are  few  parallels  in  the  literature  of  the 
race.  u  Comfort  ye,  comfort  ye  my  people, 
saith  your   God.    Speak   ye   comfortably  to 

1  Amos  ix,  2,  3. 


62  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

Jerusalem,  and  cry  unto  her,  that  her  warfare 
is  accomplished,  that  her  iniquity  is  pardoned ; 
that  she  hath  received  of  the  Lord's  hand 
double  for  all  her  sins."  '  This  majestic  call 
from  the  heights  of  God's  love  to  the  depths 
of  national  sin  and  despair  is  repeated  on  into 
the  final  words  of  the  great  message.  National 
religion  has  become  a  religion  of  life,  a  religion 
of  the  living  God;  and  his  prophet  looks  for 
him,  not  in  signs  and  wonders,  but  in  the 
whole  body  of  individual  and  social  experience. 
Every  force  in  life,  every  phase  in  human  ex- 
perience, now  has  found  a  tongue;  and  from 
the  heights  of  man's  soul  in  vicarious  suffering 
and  service  there  goes  up  the  response  to  the 
suffering  and  vicarious  love  of  God.  The  fifty- 
third  chapter  of  Isaiah  gives  us  at  his  best  the 
individual  servant  of  Jehovah  and  the  national 
servant  of  Jehovah ;  it  also  records  at  its  high- 
est in  the  literature  of  the  Old  Testament  the 
vision  of  the  God  and  Kedeemer  of  men.  To 
introduce  the  idea  of  miracle  here  would  bring 
not  light,  but  confusion ;  it  would  be  to  bring 

1  Isaiah  xl,  1,  2. 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  63 

the  mature  spirit  from  the  clear  and  sure  con- 
sciousness of  God  gained  in  the  fiery  courses 
of  experience,  back  to  the  nursery  with  its 
toys,  symbols,  and  plays.  The  clear  and  earnest 
intellect  protests,  in  the  name  of  religion, 
against  that  return  and  reduction. 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  Psalms,  the  in- 
comparable Psalms?  They  are  incomparable  as 
poetry,  because  they  are  the  unapproachable 
lyric  expression  of  the  spiritual  life  of  great 
souls.  The  life  presented  in  these  songs  is  the 
life  in  God:  — 

Lord,  thou  hast  been  our  dwelling  place 
In  all  generations. 

Before  the  mountains  were  brought  forth, 
Or  ever  thou  hadst  formed  the  earth  and  the  world, 
Even  from  everlasting  to  everlasting,  thou  art 
God. 

That  faith  is  born  not  of  miracle,  but  of  life 
and  vision.  I  might  go  on  to  recall  these  high 
words :  — 

The  Lord  is  my  light  and  my  salvation. 
God  is  our  refuge  and  strength. 


64  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

For  thy  lovingkindness  is  better  than  life. 

For  thou  hast  been  my  help, 

And  in  the  shadow  of  thy  wings  will  I  rejoice. 

The  greater  Psalms  are  woven  out  of  the 
deepest  and  sweetest  experiences,  and  the 
blazing  design  in  the  fabric  is  the  image  of 
God.  Here  miracle  is  not  denied;  it  is  left 
at  an  infinite  depth  below  this  elevation  of 
the  soul  in  God.  The  pain  of  life,  its  burden, 
disappointment,  defeat,  loss,  and  sorrow,  its 
whole  dark  tragedy,  is  lifted  into  the  being  of 
God  and  his  beauty  is  made  the  soul  of  it  all. 
Nothing  outside  the  words  of  Jesus  can  match 
the  spiritual  depth  of  these  Psalms,  their  fidel- 
ity to  the  profoundest  sorrow  and  the  loftiest 
joy,  their  accents  of  sweet  assurance  of  God, 
and  their  sense  of  him  as  life's  last  refuge  and 
hope.  When,  therefore,  we  are  troubled  over 
the  modern  disregard  of  miracle,  let  us  recall 
the  fact  that  the  greatest  things  in  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  are  in  sublime  isolation  from  mira- 
cle. Listen  again  to  the  prophetic  call  from 
the  testimony  without  to  the  witness  within: 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  65 

"  The  sun  shall  be  no  more  thy  light  by  day ; 
neither  for  brightness  shall  the  moon  give  light 
unto  thee:  but  the  Lord  shall  be  unto  thee 
an  everlasting  light,  and  thy  God  thy  glory." 

IV 

So  much  I  have  said  in  general  about  the 
relative  independence  of  miracle  of  the  faith 
in  God  in  the  Old  Testament.  I  now  wish  to 
show  in  detail  how  the  vision  of  God  is  held 
both  in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments.  As  a 
preliminary  remark,  in  accordance  with  the 
whole  higher  spirit  of  the  Bible,  it  may  be 
said  that  there  are  two  affronts  to  the  mind  of 
man :  first,  to  affirm  that  God  cannot  be  known ; 
second,  to  affirm  that  he  can  be  known  directly. 
The  first  affirmation  confines  vision  to  the 
temporal ;  the  second  gives  the  vision  of  the 
Eternal  apart  from  the  temporal.  Both  posi- 
tions are  not  in  accord  with  the  fact.  We  are 
not  confined  to  the  temporal,  and  we  cannot 
see  God  beyond  the  temporal.  We  know  God 
in  and  through  the  temporal,  and  in  and 
through  the  character  which  the  temporal  is 


66  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

made  to  bear.  There  is  a  vision  of  God,  but 
the  vision  is  indirect. 

The  Biblical  consciousness  of  God  may  be 
reduced  to  four  forms.  There  is  the  conscious- 
ness of  God  expressed  in  the  words :  "  I  have 
seen  God  face  to  face,  and  my  life  is  pre- 
served." Taking  this  statement  as  it  stands, 
what  does  it  mean?  It  conceives  God  in  bod- 
ily form,  it  looks  upon  the  face  of  God  as  we 
look  upon  the  face  of  man,  it  takes  the  face 
of  God  as  the  symbol  of  the  divine  soul  as 
we  take  the  face  of  man  as  the  symbol  of  the 
human  soul ;  and  it  reads  the  supreme  mind  in 
the  supreme  face  as  we  read  character  in  the 
countenance  of  a  friend.  The  vision  of  God  is 
indirect ;  it  is  intense ;  it  is  confident ;  it  is  vic- 
torious ;  but  it  is  through  an  intervening  face. 

Paul  says  in  his  great  lyric  on  love :  "  For 
now  we  see  in  a  mirror,  darkly."  The  mirror 
of  which  he  writes  is  the  bronze  mirror  of 
his  time.  It  might  be  dull,  or  it  might  be  bur- 
nished ;  it  might  be  in  a  poor  or  in  an  excellent 
condition ;  it  might  be  susceptible  of  indefi- 
nite improvement  as  a  mirror.    Still,  it  could 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  67 

be  nothing  more  than  a  mirror ;  it  could  give 
only  the  image,  the  reflection  of  the  object. 
Here  is  Paul's  consciousness  of  God  laid  open 
to  us.  Whether  it  referred  itself  to  Christ  or 
to  the  wondrous  changes  wrought  in  his  own 
character,  it  was  a  consciousness  of  God  as 
reflected  in  his  Lord  or  in  his  own  soul.  The 
vision  was  again  indirect ;  it  was  given  in  an 
order  of  life,  the  Lord's,  his  own,  the  world's. 

In  the  Fourth  Gospel  we  are  told  that  no 
man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time;  the  only 
begotten  Son  who  is  in  the  bosom  of  the 
Father,  he  hath  declared  him.  Here  the  vision 
of  Jesus  becomes  the  vision  of  God.  Here  is 
a  thinker,  a  sympathizer,  a  sufferer,  a  doer,  a 
victor,  in  whom  as  in  a  living  mirror  we  may 
behold  the  character  of  God  as  Eternal  thinker, 
lover,  doer,  and  victor.  The  vision  of  Jesus  is 
the  vision  of  God  through  the  Divine  man. 

Once  more  we  learn,  and  this  time  from  the 
lips  of  Jesus,  that  the  pure  in  heart  shall  see 
God.  Tested  by  experience,  this  must  mean 
that  God  becomes  visible  to  the  pure  mind  in 
the  intention  of  man's  life,  in  its  fidelity,  its 


68  RELIGION   AND  MIRACLE 

happiness  and  hope.  Just  as  in  the  spirit  level 
of  the  mason  when  it  finds  a  level  wall  the  eye 
looks  back  into  his,  so  the  plan  of  the  soul, 
the  plan  of  human  life,  becomes  strikingly 
visible  when  the  mind  is  a  pure,  a  disinterested 
mind ;  and  in  the  plan  of  our  humanity  there 
is  the  presentation  of  God.  When  this  plan  is 
operated  in  a  righteous  life,  in  a  fellowship  of 
righteous  lives,  in  the  new  creation  of  right- 
eous lives  of  which  Paul  speaks,  the  presen- 
tation of  God  is  great  and  impressive.  There 
is  the  vision  of  God,  but  again  it  is  through 
an  order  of  the  human  spirit,  an  order  made 
active  and  potent  in  life. 

This  Biblical  idea  of  the  vision  of  God  in  the 
order  and  life  of  man  is  variously  and  richly 
set  forth.  In  one  Psalm  we  read,  "  In  Judah 
is  God  known  " ;  in  another,  "  God  is  known 
in  her  palaces  "  ; '  in  the  first,  God  is  reflected 
in  the  life  of  his  people ;  in  the  second,  he  is 
seen  in  their  prosperity  and  splendor.  Again, 
we  read  that  this  poor  man  cried  unto  the  Lord, 
and  the  Lord  heard  him,  and  saved  him  out  of 

1  Psalm  lxxvi,  1  ;  xlviii,  3. 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  69 

all  his  troubles.  Here  the  exigencies  of  exist- 
ence covered  with  prayer  lead  to  the  vision 
of  God  in  the  terrible  trial.  We  are  elsewhere 
admonished  to  grow  in  grace  and  in  the 
knowledge  of  God;  here  God  is  known  as 
the  Maker  of  the  spiritual  life.  "  Return  to 
thy  rest,  0  my  soul/'  is  another  cry  from  the 
depths.  God  is  known  as  man's  refuge  and 
rest  in  a  wild  world.  In  the  days  preceding 
Pentecost  we  are  told  that  the  disciples  were 
of  one  accord,  and  that  they  continued  to- 
gether in  prayer.  Thus  the  new  society  of 
Christian  men  and  women  became  a  new  wit- 
ness for  the  God  of  love.  The  words  of  Jesus, 
"He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father," 
are  the  supreme  instance  of  this  approach  to 
God ;  that  approach  is  first  through  the  Divine 
man,  and  then  through  the  divine  in  all  men. 
There  is  one  great  book  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment which  I  find  seldom  meets  the  apprecia- 
tion that  it  merits,  I  mean  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews.  It  was  written  to  Hebrews  who  had 
become  Christians  after  Jerusalem  had  been 
destroyed,  the  temple  desecrated  and  reduced 


70  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

to  a  heap  of  stones ;  when  Israel  had  no  longer 
a  place  or  name  among  the  nations  of  the  earth ; 
when  the  facts  of  life  were  in  bitter  and  mock- 
ing contradiction  of  the  glorious  hopes  of 
prophet  and  seer ;  when  Christians  were  poor, 
scattered,  without  power,  suffering  and  dying 
in  an  empire  sinking  under  the  weight  of  its 
own  corruption ;  when  the  promised  return  of 
the  Lord  Christ  had  been  so  long  delayed  as  to 
fail  any  longer  to  inspire  courage  and  hope. 
In  this  forlorn  condition  into  which  the  Chris- 
tian community  had  come,  in  this  consciousness 
to  which  it  had  been  slowly  and  inevitably 
brought  by  the  iron  mechanism  of  the  tempo- 
ral order  in  which  it  stood,  a  nameless  writer 
of  the  highest  insight  and  character  set  him- 
self the  task  of  translating  the  religion  of  his 
race  from  the  letter  into  the  spirit,  from  de- 
pendence upon  events  in  time  to  trust  in  the 
coming  and  power  of  the  Eternal  Spirit.  The 
whole  Old  Testament  dispensation  became  a 
symbol  through  which  he  discovered  the  char- 
acter of  the  final  spiritual  religion.  Time  itself 
became  a  symbol,  a  form  of  sense,  a  poetic  em- 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  71 

blem  for  the  revelation  of  the  invisible  God  and 
his  kingdom  of  love.  Would  that  religious  men 
and  teachers  of  religion  would  read  this  mon- 
umental book  and  gain  from  it  the  sure  vision 
of  that  kingdom  which  cannot  be  shaken ! 
Here  was  a  man  who  went  through  the  disci- 
pline that  now  is  upon  us,  and  who  came  forth 
with  the  eternal  gospel  delivered  from  the 
beggarly  elements  of  the  world,  holding  its 
place  in  human  society  by  its  divine  right, 
doing  the  greatest  things  that  can  be  done 
for  men,  —  giving  them  the  certain  vision  of 
the  Eternal  God,  strength  to  serve  him,  and 
power  to  trust  the  world  to  his  infinite  good 
will  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord. 

In  this  brief  study  of  the  consciousness  of 
God  among  the  people  of  Israel,  we  find  it 
resting,  not  upon  portent  or  wonder,  but  upon 
the  divine  order  of  man's  life.  This  mighty 
consciousness  of  God  both  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment and  in  the  New  is  absolutely  independent 
of  miracle.  It  is  not  even  in  the  region  where 
miracles  are  supposed  to  take  place;  it  is  in 
the  sphere  of  the  spirit.  In  that  sphere  Prophet, 


72  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

seer,  Psalmist,  man  of  God,  met  the  Eternal 
spirit.  Through  the  constitution  of  the  soul, 
individual  and  social,  and  through  its  operation 
in  the  vision  and  service  of  the  moral  ideal, 
these  men  of  sovereign  religious  genius  beheld 
God.  They  attained  thus  to  the  vision  of  God ; 
they  were  able  to  breathe  something  of  the 
Ineffable  into  their  words,  and  those  words, 
because  they  enshrine  the  supreme  conscious- 
ness of  God,  become  the  Bible  for  mankind. 


If  now  we  consider  the  grounds  upon  which 
reasonable  men  in  all  ages  have  believed  in 
God,  we  shall  see  that  miracle  in  the  sense 
of  the  suspension  or  violation  of  natural  law 
does  not  count.  These  grounds  have  been 
some  striking  personal  experience  of  a  spirit- 
ual nature,  supported  by  a  general  process  of 
reasoning.  Socrates  lived  and  acted  under  a 
sense  of  a  special  intimation  of  the  Divine  will. 
In  the  restraining  influence  of  his  demon,  the 
belief  in  God  of  the  pious  Greeks  of  his  time 
was  made  personal   and  commanding.    The 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND   MIRACLE  73 

tradition  of  faith  thus  became  real  to  Socrates, 
as  the  tradition  of  Christian  belief  becomes 
real  to  many  in  our  time  through  what  is 
called  conversion.  In  behalf  of  this  intense 
subjective  interest,  Socrates  presents  his  argu- 
ment for  the  existence  and  goodness  of  God 
against  the  little  atheist  Aristodemus !  *  It  is 
founded  upon  the  evidence  of  design  in  man's 
body  and  intellect.  It  is,  as  Macaulay  remarks, 
as  exact  a  statement  of  the  argument  from 
design  as  that  presented  by  Paley.  It  is  no 
less  impressive  than  Paley's,  although  far  less 
elaborate.  What  concerns  us  here  is  neither 
the  validity  nor  the  invalidity  of  this  theistic 
inference,  but  the  fact  that  it  is  an  example 
of  a  great  theological  tradition  wherein  belief 
in  God  is  justified,  not  by  an  appeal  to  miracle, 
but  by  the  evidence  of  rational  order. 

The  historic  arguments  in  which  belief  in 
God  has  found  vindication  are  the  ideal,  the 
cosmological,  the  arguments  from  design  and 
from  the  moral  nature  of  man.  From  the  idea 
of  the  absolutely  perfect  being,  Anselm,  Des- 

1  Xenophon,  Memorabilia,  B.  1,  4. 


74  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

cartes,  and  others  inferred  the  existence  of  the 
supremely  perfect  mind.  From  the  universe 
as  an  event,  a  phenomenon,  other  thinkers 
have  inferred  a  cause,  a  noumenal  ground 
adequate  to  the  production  and  to  the  contin- 
uance in  being  of  all  created  worlds.  From 
the  marks  of  design  in  the  cosmos,  in  the 
world  of  animals,  in  the  body  and  mind  of 
man,  it  has  been  inferred  that  the  Creator  and 
Preserver  of  all  is  a  being  of  boundless  intelli- 
gence ;  and  from  the  moral  structure  of  the 
human  soul  and  from  the  spiritual  experience 
of  men,  it  has  been  argued  that  God  is  good. 
I  must  repeat  that  we  are  not  now  concerned 
with  either  the  soundness  or  the  unsoundness 
of  these  famous  forms  of  argument,  but  with 
the  fact  that  they  are  one  and  all  exclusive  of 
miracle. 

Two  forms  of  the  theistic  argument  merit 
special  attention.  Upon  this  question  Berkeley 
and  Kant  stand  at  the  farthest  extreme  each 
from  the  other.  For  Berkeley  the  whole  sen- 
sible world  is  the  language  in  which  the  Eter- 
nal Spirit  instructs  and  educates  the  human 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  75 

spirit ;  for  this  great  thinker  the  sensible  world 
finds  its  meaning  and  support  in  the  mind  of 
God.  Whether  one  agrees  with  Berkeley  or 
not,  there  is  something  impressive  and  search- 
ing in  the  consciousness  that  in  the  continu- 
ous flow  of  ordered  sensation,  in  the  visual, 
auditory,  and  tactual  images  that  perpetually 
crowd  the  mind,  men  are  the  partakers  of  a 
sacrament  that  sets  forth  in  all  the  richness  of 
color,  in  all  the  power  of  music,  and  in  all  the 
reality  of  touch,  the  veritable  presence  and 
life  of  God.  Again,  the  argument  not  only 
does  not  rest  in  miracle,  it  excludes  it ;  for 
the  inviolable  order  immanent  in  the  flow  of 
sensations  is  the  essential  thing  in  this  mighty 
sacrament. 

Kant  had  no  confidence  in  arguments  for 
the  Divine  existence  drawn  from  the  cosmos. 
As  an  event  it  is  finite,  as  an  ordered  event  it 
is  finite,  and  what  we  seek  is  the  Infinite  God. 
Kant's  critique  of  the  historic  forms  of  the 
theistic  argument  is  not  sympathetic.  He  does 
not  bear  in  mind  the  fact  that  all  man's 
thoughts  are  imperfect,  both  in  substance  and 


76  RELIGION  AND   MIRACLE 

in  form ;  nor  does  he  allow  to  the  arguments 
which  he  discredits  the  right  to  live  in  their 
imperfection.  That  mercy  I  to  others  show, 
that  mercy  show  to  me,  is  a  good  rule  in  philo- 
sophy. If  we  refuse  to  consider  the  imperfect 
thought  of  an  opponent  from  the  inside  and 
in  a  sympathetic  spirit,  we  have  no  right  to 
expect  that  men  in  general  will  deal  from  the 
inside  and  in  generous  sympathy  with  our  im- 
perfect thoughts.  Kant's  critique  of  the  his- 
toric forms  of  the  theistic  argument  has  been 
applied  ruthlessly  to  his  own.  Let  us  not  fol- 
low his  critics  here ;  let  us  regard  with  open 
mind  his  great  imperfect  thought.  For  Kant, 
God  is  essential  to  complete  the  moral  mean- 
ing of  human  existence.  The  central  thing  in 
man's  life  is  duty ;  the  duty  calls  for  the  con- 
ditions essential  to  its  fulfillment ;  these  are 
freedom,  that  the  dutiful  act  may  have  worth ; 
immortality,  that  the  perfectly  dutiful  life 
may  be  attained;  God,  that  the  moral  world 
of  man  may  be  intelligible  and  sure.  Here  is 
depth  and  grandeur  of  insight,  final  trust  in 
the  moral  order  of  the  world,  wonder  in  the 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  77 

presence  of  the  highest  phase  of  ultimate  real- 
ity, but  no  miracle,  and  no  room  for  it. 

In  this  apostolic  succession  of  thinkers  about 
God,  Spinoza  represents  another  tradition.  It 
is  easy  to  see  that  his  profoundly  religious 
soul  is  carried  away  by  the  idea  of  the  Infinite. 
An  inward  experience  of  comfort  and  peace 
in  God  awakens  the  acute  and  daring  intellect; 
and  that  intellect  builds  an  impressive  and 
enduring  structure  of  thought  to  prove  that 
man  is  a  self-conscious  mode  of  the  Eternal 
substance.  The  point  to  be  noted  is  the  ab- 
sence of  miracle,  the  overwhelming  realization 
and  the  close  and  vivid  articulation  of  God  in 
the  thought  and  argument  of  the  philosopher. 

Spinoza's  theistic  successor  is  Schleierma- 
cher,  who  finds  God  in  feeling,  especially  in 
the  feelings  of  dependence  and  moral  obliga- 
tion. Here  a  new  chapter  is  begun  in  men's 
belief  in  God.  Whether  we  agree  with  Schlei- 
ermacher  or  not,  we  must  note  the  depth  of 
his  consciousness  of  God  and  the  further  fact 
that  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  miracle ;  indeed, 
the  thing  for  which  religious  men  of  to-day 


78  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

are  most  indebted  to  this  German  thinker  is 
that  he  recognizes  so  profoundly  that  religion 
concerns  the  spirit  of  man  in  immediate  rela- 
tion to  the  Infinite  Spirit.  According  to  Schlei- 
ermacher,  religion  is  an  indestructible  human 
interest ;  it  is  the  highest  and  mightiest  of  all 
our  interests;  and  it  rests  on  nothing  for- 
eign to  itself,  it  rests  on  the  abiding  nature 
of  man's  soul  in  immediate  and  indissoluble 
relation  to  God. 

If  now  we  turn  to  the  custom  of  Christian 
men,  we  shall  be  confirmed  in  our  conclusion 
that  miracle  is  of  small  concern  to  the  true 
believer  in  God.  We  receive  our  belief  in  God 
from  the  pious  community  in  which  we  live. 
We  are  first  of  all  believers  in  God  on  the 
strength  of  tradition,  and  mere  traditionalists 
we  remain  till  some  crisis  in  the  soul  overtakes 
us.  Some  morning  when  we  face  the  ideal, 
when  we  stand  under  the  frown  of  the  ideal 
that  we  have  disregarded  or  denied,  when  we 
would  give  the  whole  world  to  be  on  terms  of 
self-respect  in  the  presence  of  that  ideal,  when 
through  one  sorrow  and  another  we  rise  into 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  79 

peace  and  resolve  henceforth  to  live  as  the 
servant  of  the  ideal,  our  faith  in  God  becomes 
bone  of  our  bone  and  flesh  of  our  flesh.  Out 
of  such  a  mood  Fichte  wrote  his  "Vocation 
of  Man";  out  of  such  an  experience  Carlyle 
wrote  the  three  most  powerful  chapters  in 
the  prose  of  the  nineteenth  century,  —  "  The 
Everlasting  Nay/'  "The  Point  of  Indiffer- 
ence," "  The  Everlasting  Yea." 

It  may  be  said  that  God  is  found  in  three 
great  spheres  of  our  human  existence.  In  the 
sphere  of  thought,  there  is  the  vision  of  the 
Supreme  Being,  in  whom  all  life  and  all  reality 
terminate;  in  the  sphere  of  thought,  God  be- 
comes vision.  In  the  sphere  of  action,  moral 
action,  God  is  known  as  the  ultimate  source 
of  impulse,  inspiration,  victorious  will ;  in  the 
sphere  of  moral  action,  God  is  known  as  power. 
In  the  sphere  of  character,  the  character  which 
is  the  issue  of  thought  and  action  combined, 
God  is  known  as  indwelling  spirit;  he  is 
known  in  this  sphere  as  possessor  and  pos- 
sessed, as  possessor  of  our  soul  through  habit, 
as  possessed  by  the  soul  through  habit,  tend- 


80  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

ency,  the  steady  current  of  desire  and  hope. 
In  this  great  sense  it  may  be  said:  — 

The  Lord  is  thy  keeper : 
The  Lord  is  thy  shade  upon  thy  right  hand. 
The  sun  shall  not  smite  thee  by  day, 
Nor  the  moon  by  night. 
The  Lord  will  keep  thee  from  all  evil ; 
He  will  keep  thy  soul. 

The  Lord  will  keep  thy  going  out  and  thy  com- 
ing in, 
From  this  time  forth  and  for  evermore.1 

In  all  this  there  is  no  word  of  miracle; 
there  is  nothing  but  the  glory  of  living  in 
God  now,  thinking  his  world  in  him,  serving 
his  kingdom  in  him,  and  in  the  fixed  and  yet 
growing  habit  of  the  soul  possessing  him  and 
possessed  by  him.  Read  again  Augustine's 
account  of  the  last  days  of  his  beautiful 
mother,  and  in  that  connection  read  once 
more  Matthew  Arnold's  sonnet  on  "  Monica's 
Last  Prayer,"  as  a  witness  to  the  ways  of  the 
spirit  in  bringing  us  to  the  full  consciousness 
of  God. 

1  Psalm  cxxi,  5-8. 


BELIEF  IN  GOD  AND  MIRACLE  81 

"  Ah,  could  thy  grave  at  home,  at  Carthage,  be !  " 
"  Care  not  for  that,  and  lay  me  where  I  fall. 

Everywhere  heard  will  be  the  judgment-call ; 

But  at  God's  altar,  oh !  remember  me.' 

Thus  Monica,  and  died  in  Italy. 
Yet  fervent  had  her  longing  been,  through  all 
Her  course,  for  home  at  last,  and  burial 
With  her  own  husband,  by  the  Libyan  sea. 

Had  been !  but  at  the  end,  to  her  pure  soul 
All  tie  with  all  beside  seem'd  vain  and  cheap, 
And  union  before  God  the  only  care. 

Creeds  pass,  rites  change,  no  altar  standeth  whole. 
Yet  we  her  memory,  as  she  pray'd,  will  keep, 
Keep  by  this :  il  Life  in  God,  and  union  there ! " 

This  leads  me  to  recall  here  the  commun- 
ion of  saints  with  God.  The  literature  of 
this  communion  is  very  great  in  extent  and  in 
worth.  The  Fourth  Gospel  catches  and  per- 
petuates notes  in  the  life  of  Jesus  that  his 
disciples  will  forever  cherish,  his  sense  so 
perfect  and  so  sure  that  the  Eternal  is  an  open 
secret  in  time,  his  consciousness  radiant,  all- 
triumphant  in  the  light  and  might  of  God. 
The  Epistles  of  John  mark  the  persistence  of 


82  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

this  mode  of  thought ;  the  discovery  that  God 
is  love,  that  God  is  light  in  whom  there  is  no 
darkness  at  all,  is  a  discovery  through  the 
courses  of  the  life  of  the  soul.  The  "  Confes- 
sions" of  Augustine,  the  "Theologia  Ger- 
manica,"  the  a  Ecclesiastica  Musiea,"  the  en- 
tire witness  of  the  Mystics,  and  the  inner  light 
of  the  Quakers  bring  us  into  a  world  of  spirit 
to  which  miracle  is  foreign,  and  where  infer- 
ence is  but  a  single  step.  In  the  presence  of 
all  these  ways  by  which  the  consciousness  of 
God  is  kept  in  the  world,  and  made  availing 
over  the  tides  of  human  interest  and  passion, 
it  becomes  clear  that,  whatever  may  be  the 
fortune  awaiting  miracle,  our  faith  in  God  is 
not  involved  in  that  fortune;  that  faith  is 
original,  independent,  and  sure. 


CHAPTER  III 

JESUS    CHRIST   AND    MIRACLE 


FT  miracle  is  a  myth,  will  not  the  significance 
-*?  of  Jesus  Christ  be  greatly  reduced?  If 
Jesus  and  his  gospel  are  wholly  confined  within 
the  natural  order,  like  the  motion  in  the  wheel, 
like  the  physical  life  of  ordinary  men,  will 
not  the  loss  to  faith  be  very  great?  In  the 
evangelical  record,  is  not  miracle  the  constant 
accompaniment  of  his  career  from  beginning 
to  end  ?  And  how  can  this  large  element  be 
eliminated  without  reducing  the  dignity  and 
freedom  of  his  recorded  career  ? 

Perhaps  it  may  prepare  the  way  for  the 
happy  surprise  in  which  our  discussion  must 
issue  to  reflect  that  we  can  imagine  a  career 
as  full  of  miracle  as  the  life  of  Jesus  is  believed 
to  be,  and  yet  without  worth.  The  miraculous  i 
does  not  impart  to  our  Lord  his  worth.  We  1 


84  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

can  imagine  one  born  without  a  human  father, 
able  to  still  storms  and  to  walk  on  the  tem- 
pestuous waves,  to  feed  multitudes  on  food 
ordinarily  sufficient  only  for  a  few  persons, 
cleansing  lepers,  opening  blind  eyes,  unstop- 
ping deaf  ears,  raising  the  dead,  and  finally 
himself  reappearing  after  death ;  we  can  im- 
agine a  career  like  this  full  of  portent  and 
wonder  from  beginning  to  end,  and  yet  abso- 
lutely destitute  of  those  supreme  qualities 
that  have  given  to  Jesus  the  moral  leadership 
of  the  world.  It  is  possible  to  conceive  this 
miraculous  career  as  entirely  devoid  of  moral 
worth.  If  Satan  has  the  power  to  transform 
himself  into  an  angel  of  light,  we  can  imagine 
this  miraculous  person  moving  through  his 
wonder-working  career  not  only  destitute  of 
high  qualities,  but  also  with  a  malign  aim. 
Plato's  story  of  the  ring  of  Gyges  is  an  illus- 
tration of  this  possibility.  The  wearer  of  this 
ring  becomes  invisible.  He  moves  in  an  order 
of  miracle ;  for  him  natural  law  does  not  exist. 
Yet  his  power  to  do  with  nature  as  he  pleases 
may  mean  boundless  opportunity  to  defraud 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  85 

and  outrage  human  life  undetected.  And  if 
this  wizard  becomes  a  beneficent  wizard,  who 
knows  that  he  is  not  devising  new  forms  of 
deception  and  plunder  ?  It  is  plainly  possible, 
therefore,  that  we  might  have  the  miracles  of 
Jesus  without  Jesus  himself ;  that  we  might 
possess  the  wonderful  works  without  possessing 
the  Divine  man. 

If  this  is  possible,  something  follows  of 
great  consequence.  If  we  might  possess  the 
miracles  of  our  Lord  without  possessing  the 
Lord  himself,  does  it  not  follow  that  we  might 
lose  the  miracles  of  our  Lord  and  still  retain 
him  ajf  all  the  miracles  were  gone,  the  vision 
of  Jesus  would  remain!  There  is  no  mention 
of  miracle  in  the  Lord's  Prayer,  none  in  the 
great  discourse  in  which  that  prayer  stands, 
none  in  the  wonderful  parabolic  teaching  of 
our  Master,  none  in  the  wisdom  with  which 
he  filled  jhejwcTld.  There  are  three  things  ctf  I 
immortal  value  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  There 
is  his  vision  of  God  as  infinite  compassionate 
love,  the  Maker  and  Father  of  men.  There  is 
his  vision  of  man  as  the  child  of  the  Eternal, 


86  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

fitted  in  this  temporal  existence  to  reproduce 
in  his  human  relations  the  dear  and  just  love 
of  God.  There  is  the  vision  which  Jesus  has 
of  himself  as  the  person  in  whom  these  two 
visions  are  verified.  He  has  his  personal  vision 
of  God;  he  lives  out  in  conduct  his  vision  of 
his  sonhood  to  God;  and  he  becomes  thereby 
the  living  witness  for  the  God  who  is  the  uni- 
versal Father  and  for  a  sonhood  wide  as  the 
race  of  man.  These  three  visions  are  absolutely 
independent  of  miracle,  they  are  the  direct 
insight  of  his  mind  into  the  heart  of  things. 
His  insights  have  power  in  them  to  control 
the  thinking  and  to  renew  the  character  of 
all  who  are  willing  to  move  in  their  light. 

I  have  summed  up  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
in  these  three  visions,  but  any  such  summary 
is  utterly  inadequate.  The  wisdom  of  Jesus 
comes  up  through  the  relations  and  circum- 
stances of  man  as  the  life  of  nature  comes  in 
spring  and  summer.  The  hard  and  barren 
surface  rests  back  upon  life ;  it  is  broken  at  a 
thousand  points  into  the  path  of  life;  it  is 
transformed  by  the  tender  beauty  and  the 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  87 

abounding  fruitfulness  of  life;  it  becomes  a 
new  world,  a  new  humanity.  Never  man  so 
spake.  His  words  are  meat  and  drink  to  the 
soul ;  they  are  spirit  and  life.  And  when  we 
recall  the  fact  that  man  cannot  live  by  bread 
alone,  that  he  needs  the  word  of  God,  the 
word  of  supreme  wisdom  and  cheer,  we  begin 
to  see  what  the  infinite  wealth  of  the  wise 
teaching  of  Jesus  means.  When  he  says  that 
God  makes  his  sun  to  shine  upon  the  evil 
and  the  good  and  sends  his  rain  upon  the 
just  and  the  unjust,  his  vision  enables  him  to 
discover  in  this  order  a  hint  of  the  infinite 
magnanimity  of  the  Eternal.  Lessons  come 
through  law ;  law  operating  in  apparent  indif- 
ference to  the  worth  or  worthlessness  of  men 
is  lifted  into  a  symbol  of  a  moral  perfection 
in  God  hitherto  unimagined,  and  the  careless 
God  becomes  the  eternal  magnanimity.  Such 
is  the  universal  result  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus. 
It  is  almost  traduced  in  our  summaries.  It 
meets  life  at  a  thousand  points,  and  leaves 
the  particular  trial  shining  in  a  flood  of  light. 
This  wisdom  and  the  divining  spirit  in  which 


88  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

it  issues  are  entirely  independent  of  miracle. 
No  miracle  could  increase  the  depth,  the 
pathos,  the  fidelity  to  life,  or  the  reach  of  sug- 
gestion concerning  the  attitude  of  God  to 
men  of  the  Parable  of  the  Lost  Son.  The  ab- 
sence of  miracle  could  in  no  way  lessen  the 
wisdom  and  benignity  of  such  teaching.  The 
natural  order  cannot  forbid  the  mother  and 
child  from  recognizing  each  the  other,  from 
responding  each  to  the  other's  love.  Within 
the  fixed  bounds  of  nature  this  insight,  this 
freedom  and  joy,  are  possible.  The  natural 
order  cannot  prohibit  or  in  any  way  limit  or 
mar  the  wisdom  of  Jesus ;  the  vision  of  Jesus 
is  unconditioned ;  his  freedom  is  not  in  the 
keeping  of  any  force  other  than  his  own  mind. 
It  is  equally  clear  that  his  character  is  in- 
dependent. It  has  the  twofold  significance 
that  we  discern  in  all  great  character,  it  is 
a  product  and  it  is  an  achievement.  It  is  a 
product  of  the  Infinite  to  whom  he  is  in 
a  constant  self-surrender.  In  that  constant 
self-surrender  his  will  is  taking  its  shape  from 
the  Eternal  will,  his  mind  is  receiving  form 


JESUS   CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  89 

from  the  Eternal  mind,  his  heart  is  under 
the  culture  of  the  Eternal  heart.  Jesus  moves 
in  the  transcendent  sense  of  God,  and  from 
God  comes  the  product  of  his  perfect  charac- 
ter. It  is  an  issue  from  the  Infinite  soul,  to 
whom  his  soul  goes  up  in  honor  and  self- 
surrender.  This  process  is  within  the  bounds 
of  nature,  and  yet  nature  has  nothing  to  do 
with  it.  It  is  a  process  in  the  freedom  of  the 
spirit.  Wherever  Jesus  might  be,  he  had  but 
to  think  and  God  would  know  it ;  he  had 
but  to  think  and  he  would  know  God  perfect- 
ing his  being.  Wherever  he  might  be,  he  had 
only  to  lift  his  spirit  and  there  was  the  Eter- 
nal, he  had  only  to  open  his  soul  and  God 
was  within  him.  To  speak  here  of  miracle, 
wonder,  portent,  is  a  kind  of  blasphemy. 
Shall  we  introduce  into  this  supreme  sanctu- 
ary of  humanity  the  vulgar  appeal  to  sense, 
the  tricks  and  feats  of  the  wizard?  Nature 
at  her  best,  miracle  at  its  highest,  is  at  an 
infinite  depth  below  the  elevation  on  which 
the  soul  of  God  and  the  soul  of  Jesus  stand 
in  a  communion  ineffable. 


90  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

The  character  of  Jesus  viewed  as  an 
achievement  precludes  miracle ;  it  is  not  only 
independent  of  miracle,  it  is  inconsistent  with 
miracle.  Here  the  great  temptation  is  illu- 
minating. Under  trial,  stones  must  not  be 
turned  into  bread ;  nor  must  the  Highest 
throw  himself  from  the  pinnacle  of  the  tem- 
ple. Character  is  not  thus  won.  It  is  won 
under  the  heat  and  burden  of  the  day,  in 
service  and  in  suffering  within  the  terms  of 
the  natural  life.  Jesus  stood  in  human  rela- 
tions with  human  ideals  and  under  human 
obligations.  He  stood  under  these  obliga- 
tions in  a  world  of  trouble  and  contradiction. 
To  provide  for  him  a  miraculous  escape  from 
this  order  of  trial  and  contradiction  would  be 
to  deny  him  the  opportunity  that  God  has 
given  to  every  man,  and  to  withhold  from 
him  the  eternal  gladness  which  God  has  made 
possible  for  every  soul.  In  Nazareth,  by  the 
Jordan,  in  the  wilderness  of  Judea,  by  the 
Sea  of  Galilee,  in  all  the  towns  and  cities  of 
his  country,  among  his  disciples  and  among 
the  multitudes  that  came  to  hear  him,  with 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  91 

those  who  loved  him  and  with  those  who  tried 
to  defeat  him,  Jesus  found  the  opportunity 
of  his  existence.  Through  this  natural  order, 
with  human  lives  set  in  it,  Jesus  won  his 
character  out  of  the  grace  of  the  Eternal. 
Through  this  order  of  trial  and  service  came 
the  strength  and  benignity  of  his  soul.  In 
one  sense  he  thought  seldom  of  himself  and 
often  and  much  of  the  needy  world.  "The 
Son  of  Man  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto, 
but  to  minister,  and  to  give  his  life  a  ransom 
for  many."  He  lived  out  of  the  heart  of  the 
paradox,  "  he  that  saves  his  life  shall  lose  it, 
and  he  that  loses  his  life  shall  save  it."  But 
after  all,  this  was  but  the  method  of  his  life. 
He  lost  it  in  loving  thought  and  service  to 
find  it  in  yet  richer  perfection ;  he  departed 
from  himself  in  devotion  to  the  good  of  others 
to  return  to  himself  in  a  sublimer  self-con- 
sciousness. And  we  must  think  of  him  who 
in  so  many  ways  is  the  great  consecration  of 
the  beauty  of  our  world  as  the  Divine  artist. 
He  had  the  artist's  vision  of  the  completed 
human   character ;  and   he   had   the  artist's 


92  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

knowledge  of  the  ways  and  means  of  artistic 
creation  and  the  patience,  the  infinite  loving 
patience.  Thus  Jesus  won  his  soul.  He  walked 
the  weary  way  of  the  world.  He  did  its  poor 
work.  He  spent  his  strength  in  lowly  service. 
He  met  and  overcame  the  evils  of  life,  small 
and  great.  He  bore  his  trouble  with  benignity. 
He  accepted  supreme  disappointment  not  only 
with  no  trace  of  bitterness,  but  also  with  in- 
finite compassion.  He  transfigured  the  mean 
circumstances  of  existence  by  the  eternal  ro- 
mance of  the  dutiful  spirit.  Like  the  flower 
in  the  swamp,  he  lifted  above  the  vile  flood  of 
things  the  stainless  purity  and  perfect  beauty 
of  his  soul,  and  up  through  the  mire  and  dirt 
of  the  earth  he  drew  from  God  the  perfecting 
grace. 

I  have  said  that  the  temptation  of  Jesus 
would  lose  its  whole  meaning  if  miracle  were 
introduced  into  it.  The  same  remark  must  be 
made  of  the  scene  in  Gethsemane.  What  is 
there  in  the  records  of  the  world  to  compare 
with  this  ?  Here  is  the  supremely  faithful  and 
loving  soul  face  to  face  with  utter  temporal 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  93 

defeat;  here  is  the  highest  service  about  to 
receive  as  reward  infamy,  torture,  and  death. 
The  whole  tragedy  of  existence  is  here  opened 
to  the  heart — the  reversal  of  just  expectation, 
the  contradiction  of  just  hope.  Here  in  infi- 
nite night  Jesus  suffers  alone ;  here  he  speaks 
in  the  thick  darkness  his  inmost  thought  to 
God ;  here  he  lays  bare  the  horror  in  his  heart 
over  what  he  has  done  and  what  he  is  about 
to  receive;  here  he  offers  the  prayer  whose 
initial  cry  is  that  the  cup  of  death  may  pass 
from  him,  and  whose  final  words  are  the 
greatest  ever  spoken  in  this  world :  "  Neverthe- 
less not  my  will,  but  thine,  be  done."  If  this 
experience  is  not  great,  nothing  known  to  man 
is  great.  How  far  away  from  the  poor  show 
of  miracle  it  is.  How  sublime  it  is  as  the 
triumph  of  a  soul  in  the  Eternal  soul.  How 
precious  it  is  as  an  attestation  of  the  reality 
of  the  human  spirit  and  the  Divine.  How 
great  it  is  with  illumination  and  peace  for  the 
brave  in  all  the  generations  as  they  suffer  in 
the  night,  as  they  appeal  to  God  in  the  depths. 
What  an  infinite  order  it  throws  open,  where 


94  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

souls  caught  in  the  tragic  order  of  the  world 
are  upon  the  stairs  that  slope  through  dark- 
ness up  to  God.  How  vast,  terrible,  beautiful, 
and  near  to  the  Eternal  peace  it  shows  our 
human  world  to  stand.  Let  no  miracle  pro- 
fane its  sanctity,  let  no  thought  of  miracle 
degrade  or  diminish  its  hallowed  and  infinite 
import. 

A  sect  of  some  significance  arose  in  the 
early  church  claiming  that  Jesus  did  not  die, 
that  he  only  appeared  to  die.  This  sect  thought 
it  inconsistent  with  the  dignity  of  our  Lord 
that  he  should  die.  This  folly  was  fittingly 
met  with  expulsion  from  the  body  of  normal 
Christian  faith.  The  death  of  Jesus  was  real ; 
it  was  true  that  he  saved  others,  but  himself 
he  could  not  save.  His  devotion  to  his  cause 
must  be  unto  the  uttermost.  And  whatever 
may  be  our  philosophy  of  the  event,  the 
death  of  Jesus  has  been  recognized  by  all 
believers  in  him  as  an  element  of  power,  in  his 
religion,  of  transcendent  value.  We  recall  that 
death  in  our  worship  at  stated  intervals:  the 
sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper  is  the  sacra- 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  95 

ment  of  his  death.  As  an  expression,  as  an 
attestation  of  love,  the  whole  church  through- 
out the  world  kneels  in  its  presence.  Our  chief 
objection  to  transubstantiation  and  con  sub- 
stantiation is  not  that  they  are  absurdities, 
but  that  they  obscure  with  the  quackery  of 
miracle  the  utmost  splendor  in  the  bright  do- 
main of  love.  While  we  worship  in  this  sanc- 
tuary we  cry,  Take  these  things  hence;  my 
Father's  house  shall  be  called  a  house  of 
prayer,  but  ye  have  made  it  a  den  of  jug- 
glers. When  Jesus  said,  "It  is  finished," 
and  added,  "Father,  into  thy  hands  I  com- 
mend my  spirit,"  he  consummated  his  earthly 
career  in  a  character  that  is  spiritual,  and  as 
such  is  the  sovereign  light  and  comfort  of  men. 

ii 

Taken  as  a  whole,  and  as  a  service  to  the 
religious  life,  will  not  the  career  of  Jesus 
suffer  great  reduction  in  value,  if  the  miracu- 
lous is  entirely  eliminated  from  it  ?  In  answer 
to  this  question,  let  us  take  the  two  instances 
of  the  miraculous  that  are  oftenest  before  our 


96  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

minds  to-day :  the  birth  of  Jesus  and  his  bodily- 
resurrection.  In  these  two  fundamental  in- 
stances the  whole  question  may  be  considered. 
Among  reasonable  Christians  of  all  types 
of  belief  it  is,  I  think,  generally  felt  that  it  is 
immaterial  how  Jesus  began,  or  how  he  came 
into  the  world.  They  feel  that  they  are  con- 
cerned not  with  the  process,  but  with  the  re- 
sult. And  it  may  here  be  added  that  about  the 
origin  of  the  life  of  Jesus  knowledge  is  un- 
attainable ;  the  life  itself  is  before  the  world. 
If  that  life  in  its  solitary  perfection  is  the 
supreme  mystery,  let  it  so  stand.  One  mystery 
is  not  explained  by  resolving  it  into  another. 
No  denial  concerning  the  manner  of  the  be- 
ginning of  the  life  of  our  Lord  can  touch  the 
fair  and  sovereign  result ;  that  is  fact ;  that  is 
open  to  the  judgment  of  the  world.  The 
theory  that  Jesus  had  no  human  father  can- 
not make  him  more  Divine ;  the  denial  of  that 
theory  cannot  in  any  way  interfere  with  his 
supremacy.  Whichever  way  he  began  to  be, 
Jesus  is  what  he  is.  He  is  independent  of  the 
question  how  he  came  into  our  world. 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  97 

There  are  many  to  whom  the  tradition  that 
Jesus  had  no  human  father  is  precious.  As 
no  one  can  prove  that  he  had  a  human  father, 
their  sentiment  on  this  subject  is  unassailable. 
There  are  many,  and  these  among  the  best 
and  soundest  of  the  disciples  of  Jesus,  to 
whom  this  tradition  is  unwelcome.  They  recall 
the  fact  that  neither  in  the  Gospel  by  Mark 
nor  in  the  Gospel  by  John  is  the  subject 
mentioned;  that  in  all  the  New  Testament 
writings  outside  of  the  stories  in  Matthew  and 
Luke,  there  is  not  a  word  in  favor  of  it.  In- 
deed, scholars  whose  orthodoxy  has  never  been 
disputed  have  contended  that  Paul's  view  is 
opposed  to  the  traditional  view.  Paul  uses 
these  words  of  his  Master :  "  Who  was  born  of 
the  seed  of  David  according  to  the  flesh,  who 
was  declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God  with  power, 
according  to  the  spirit  of  holiness,  by  the  res- 
urrection of  the  dead."  For  the  view  that  Jesus 
had  no  human  father,  the  evidence  in  the  New 
Testament  is  at  best  slight.  If  the  belief  was 
current  in  the  apostolic  church,  it  was  consid- 
ered of  little  moment.  What  Paul  and  Peter 


98  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

and  John  considered  immaterial,  we  may  con- 
sider immaterial;  what  the  Second  and  the 
Fourth  Gospels  disregard,  we  may  disregard ; 
what  in  the  entire  New  Testament  is  relegated 
to  two  stories  in  the  beginning  of  the  First 
and  Third  Gospels,  we  may  relegate  to  a  place 
of  similar  subordination. 

Supported  by  Scripture  in  so  slight  a  way 
as  this  tradition  is,  one  must  look  elsewhere 
for  explanation  of  its  hold  upon  Christian 
feeling.  A  theory  of  human  nature  lies  back 
of  it.  This  theory  is  that  human  nature  is  de- 
praved, and  that  its  natural  issue  is  necessarily 
depraved.  In  men  and  women  there  is  nothing 
good.  When  they  become  husband  and  wife, 
father  and  mother,  that  which  is  born  of  them 
partakes  of  their  depravity.  From  human 
parents  there  cannot  come  by  ordinary  gen- 
eration a  perfect  child.  Jesus  was  a  perfect 
child ;  therefore  he  could  not  have  come  into 
the  world  by  ordinary  generation. 

This  argument  has  been  strengthened 
through  many  generations  of  Christian  history 
by  ascetic  feeling.  Men  and  women  have  been 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  99 

ashamed  of  their  humanity,  they  have  looked 
upon  their  natural  impulses  as  a  humiliation, 
they  have  regarded  family  life  as  a  concession 
to  the  animal  in  their  nature ;  they  have  con- 
sidered the  unmarried  state  as  higher  than 
the  married,  as  indeed  the  only  condition  com- 
patible with  moral  purity.  A  celibate  priest- 
hood has  set  the  example  to  this  way  of  think- 
ing. An  inveterate  prejudice  has  thus  arisen 
against  the  honor  of  wedded  love  and  natural 
human  parenthood. 

Against  both  these  positions  it  is  impossible 
too  strongly  to  protest.  Human  nature  is  not 
a  depraved  thing ;  it  has  been  outraged ;  it  is 
outraged ;  but  in  spite  of  outrage  it  remains 
higher  than  all  else  that  we  know  except  its 
own  ideals.  It  is  our  witness  for  God,  our 
chief  witness,  and  the  less  we  see  of  its  in- 
herent honor,  the  less  we  see  of  him.  Human 
beings  are  capable  of  love,  and  wherever  love 
exists,  character  is  cleansed  and  elevated.  The 
love  of  a  man  for  a  woman  and  the  love  of  a 
woman  for  a  man,  under  the  sanction  of  law, 
and  in  the  form  of  marriage,  is  the  heart  of 


100  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

all  that  is  best  in  the  life  of  the  race.  It  is 
true  that  human  nature  does  not  answer  to 
its  own  ideals.  That  simply  shows  another  as- 
pect of  its  greatness.  It  is  dissatisfied  with 
itself  because  God  troubles  it  with  his  presence. 
It  longs  for  the  new  heaven  and  the  new  earth 
because  the  impulse  of  the  Perfect  is  alive  in 
its  heart.  It  cannot  rest  until  it  rest  in  God  be- 
cause he  has  made  it  for  himself.  The  failure  to 
do  justice  to  human  nature  is  less  strange  than 
the  failure  to  see  the  dignity  of  natural  human 
parenthood.  While  it  is  true  that  some  of  the 
best  men  and  women  who  have  ever  lived 
have  voluntarily  remained  outside  wedded  life, 
while  it  is  true  that  many  may  be  justified  in 
this  attitude  to-day,  it  must  still  be  said  that 
the  ideal  state  for  every  man  and  every  woman 
is  marriage  as  the  sacrament  of  love.  The 
single  life  may  be  accepted  as  a  sacrifice ;  it 
is  always  less  than  the  best.  The  best  thing 
in  the  happiest  human  existence  is  family  love, 
and  the  best  thing  in  family  love  is  parenthood. 
The  man  and  the  woman  who  have  not  had 
their  first-born  laid  under  the  protection  of  their 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  101 

tenderness  and  truth  cannot  know  how  near 
to  the  human  heart  the  Lord  and  Giver  of  life 
may  come.  The  sanctuaries  of  the  world  are 
not  its  churches,  mosques,  and  temples ;  they 
are  the  places  where  children  are  born  of 
men  and  women  in  honorable  wedlock.  There 
in  the  awe  and  mystery  of  the  natural  life 
God  shows  his  face  as  he  does  nowhere  else 
in  all  the  universe.  The  utmost  sanctity  of 
our  world  lies  in  its  worthy  paternity  and 
maternity.  And  only  God  knows  how  the 
worth  of  this  wicked  world  is  renewed  through 
the  process  of  natural  human  parenthood.  So 
long  as  men  love  women  worthily  and  women 
love  men  worthily,  so  long  as  these  lovers  be- 
come husbands  and  wives  under  the  sanction 
of  law,  the  process  of  natural  parenthood  will 
keep  in  our  world  chivalry,  honor,  tenderness, 
fidelity,  faith,  and  the  certain  sense  of  the 
dear  Eternal  God.  Take  out  of  our  race  mar- 
riage and  productive  human  love,  and  all  the 
great  things  in  human  character  will  disappear. 
It  is  immensely  interesting  to  find  the  Greek 
Aristotle  and  the  American  Edwards  at  one 


102  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

here.  The  Greek  philosopher  saw  that  the 
animal  impulse  in  man  and  woman  takes  on  a 
moral  character  when  touched  by  love ;  and 
the  American  theologian  saw  the  same  law  of 
life/  an  insight  indeed  common  to  all  good 
men.  Love  lives  in  natural  impulses  and  pro- 
cesses, and  changes  their  character.  Thus  it  is 
that  children  in  worthy  human  homes  are  born 
of  the  Spirit.  By  the  strength  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  they  began  to  be ;  by  his  strength  they 
were  brought  into  the  world.  In  this  sense  it 
is  forever  true  that  Jesus  was  conceived  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  while  born  of  his  mother  and  her 
honorable  husband. 

The  miracle  at  the  beginning  of  the  life 
of  Jesus  does  not,  therefore,  fall  in  with  the 
thoughts  and  experiences  of  reasonable  Chris- 
tian people  to-day.  The  nearer  to  Christ  that 
men  and  women  in  their  homes  come,  the  less 
acceptable  becomes  that  miracle,  the  less  com- 
patible with  their  own  life  and  hope.  Besides, 
it  strikes  them  as  an  awkward  miracle.  The 

1  Ethics,  Book  IX,  12,  25  ;  The  Nature  of  Virtue,  chapter 
vii. 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND   MIRACLE  103 

influence  of  the  father  upon  the  child  is  slight 
compared  with  the  influence  of  the  mother. 
The  child  is  literally  bone  of  her  bone,  and 
flesh  of  her  flesh;  indeed,  all  the  world  ac- 
knowledges the  predominance,  the  sovereignty 
of  the  mother.  If,  therefore,  the  Creative  Spirit 
is  unable  to  neutralize  the  influence  of  the 
father  in  so  far  as  it  is  malign,  how  can  he 
overcome  the  infinitely  greater  influence  of 
the  mother  in  so  far  as  it  is  unfortunate  ?  It 
is  this  view  of  the  subject  that  gives  to  the 
miracle  in  question  the  appearance  of  awk- 
wardness and  futility. 

Three  possibilities  are  here  set  before  us. 
In  the  first  possibility  we  are  driven  back  in 
an  endless  regress  of  miracle.  We  are  driven 
back  from  the  immaculate  child  to  the  im- 
maculate mother,  from  the  immaculate  mother 
to  the  immaculate  grandmother,  back  to  the 
immaculate  first  mother.  In  the  second  possi- 
bility we  must  claim  with  Edward  Irving  that 
Jesus  derived  from  his  mother  a  taint  in  the 
flesh  which  he  overcame  in  the  spirit.  In  the 
third  possibility  we  hold  that  in  bringing  his 


104  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

Son  into  the  world  the  Lord  and  Giver  of  life 
lived  in  the  process  of  natural  parenthood, 
controlled  its  issues,  and  brought  forth  the 
perfect,  the  Divine  child. 

Whether  he  came  with  miracle  or  without 
it,  Jesus  is  the  same;  whether  his  life  came  by 
the  path  of  nature  or  by  the  path  of  miracle, 
it  is  from  God.  Of  so  much  we  are  sure.  And 
in  our  present  leanings  toward  the  natural, 
here  we  appear  to  have  found  certain  gains. 
We  do  not  like  to  think  that  human  nature  is 
essentially  bad,  that  under  God  it  is  incapable 
of  the  greatest  things.  We  have  little  patience 
with  the  preference  of  the  celibate  over  the 
wedded  life.  We  know  how  great  is  the  do- 
mestic life  of  good  men  and  women,  and  we 
long  for  the  adequate  vision  of  what  we  believe 
to  be  the  best  thing  in  our  human  world.  The 
elimination  of  miracle  here  seems,  therefore, 
to  be  gain.  In  one  case  we  have  a  divine  re- 
sult through  a  miraculous  process  with  the 
infelicity  of  an  implied  slur  upon  parenthood ; 
in  the  other  we  have  a  divine  result  through  a 
natural  process  with  the  happiness  of  having 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  105 

found  a  new  standard  and  immortal  honor  for 
the  parenthood  of  the  world. 

For  myself,  as  I  stand  among  the  wise 
men  by  the  manger  in  Bethlehem,  I  forget  to 
raise  the  question,  even  in  thought,  how  this 
child  came  to  be ;  with  the  wise  men,  I  can 
only  open  my  heart  in  homage  and  gifts.  If 
at  any  less  inspired  time  and  place  I  pass  in 
thought  this  scene  of  tender  and  transcend- 
ent loveliness  back  into  its  utmost  beginnings, 
I  am  sure  that  I  behold  nothing  but  all- 
hallowing,  all-transforming  love,  and  in  the 
presence  of  a  mystery  too  full  of  God  for 
mortal  vision  to  pierce,  I  desire,  like  the 
prophet  of  old,  to  wrap  my  mantle  about  my 
face,  and  answer  the  Eternal  honor  that  lives 
here,  and  that  lives  in  the  process  of  natural 
parenthood  in  all  worthy  men  and  women,  in 
silent  awe  and  thankful  trust. 

When  we  come  to  the  resurrection  of 
Jesus,  we  come  to  that  which  is  central  in  the 
gospel;  apostolic  faith  and  service  begin 
here.  There  is  only  one  mind  at  this  point 
among  the  teachers  and  leaders  in  the  apos- 


106  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

tolic  community.  Peter  and  James  and  John 
and  Paul  had  seen  the  Lord ;  they  believed  in 
a  risen  Lord  ;  they  served  a  risen  Lord.  Paul 
recites  the  fact  that  after  his  death  Jesus  "  ap- 
peared to  Cephas ;  then  to  the  twelve ;  then 
he  appeared  to  above  five  hundred  brethren 
at  once,  of  whom  the  greater  part  remain  until 
now,  but  some  are  fallen  asleep ;  then  he  ap- 
peared unto  James ;  then  to  all  the  apostles ; 
and  last  of  all,  as  to  one  born  out  of  due 
time,  he  appeared  to  me  also.  .  .  .  Whether 
then  it  be  I  or  they,  so  we  preach,  and  so  ye 
believed." '  Here  is  absolute  unanimity  of  faith 
in  the  risen  Christ.  Nothing  can  be  clearer, 
nothing  simpler,  than  this  fact;  apostolic  life, 
labor,  joy,  and  hope  rose  out  of  faith  in  the 
risen  Lord.  About  this  belief  among  the 
apostles  there  is  no  doubt,  no  uncertainty, 
no  shadow  of  any  kind.  Our  Christian  faith 
began  with  those  who  were  sure  that  they  had 
seen  the  Lord  after  his  passion ;  it  began  with 
those  who  were  disciples  and  servants  not  of 
a  dead,  but  of  a  living  and  reigning  Christ. 

1  1  Corinthians  xv,  6-11. 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  107 

Is  the  bodily  resurrection  of  Jesus  essential 
to  this  faith  ?  If  the  physical  resurrection  is 
denied  in  the  name  of  natural  law,  does  it 
follow  that  the  spiritual  resurrection  must  be 
unreal?  The  Gospels  seem  to  describe "ITl 
physical  rising  from  the  dead ;  Paul's  vision 
of  Jesus  was  spiritual.  Which  form  of  resur- 
rection is  the  surer  and  the  mightier,  that  to 
which  the  Gospels  bear  testimony,  or  that  of 
which  Paul  is  the  witness  ? 

The  essential  thing  here  is  the  assurance 
of  a  risen  Lord ;  we  are  not  supremely  con- 
cerned about  the  manner  of  the  resurrec- 
tion ;  what  we  desire  is  assurance  of  the  fact. 
We  desire  to  know  if,  after  his  crucifixion, 
Jesus  was  able  to  convince  his  disciples  that 
he  was  still  alive,  that  he  was  still  with  them, 
the  source  of  their  life  and  wisdom  and  hope. 
It  seems  to  me  that  if  we  can  be  sure  that  we 
have  a  living  and  reigning  Lord,  we  shall  not 
be  greatly  troubled  over  the  manner  of  his 
resurrection.  Did  Jesus  survive  death?  Did 
he  appear  to  his  disciples  after  death?  Did 
he   convince   them   that  he  was  still  alive? 


108  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

Did  lie  continue  to  convince  them  that  he 
was  always  with  them  on  to  the  end  of  their 
lives  ?  Of  this  there  can  be  no  doubt. 

They  had  seen  the  Lord ;  they  knew  him 
in  these  appearances  as  the  Lord ;  they  con- 
tinued to  receive  his  word  ;  they  became  con- 
scious that  his  life  in  them  was  more  emphatic 
than  their  own.  He  was  in  them  the  hope 
of  glory.  Their  entire  service  and  character 
was  the  attestation  of  the  clearness  and  the 
honesty  of  their  minds  upon  this  fundamental 
question ;  they  knew  him  and  the  power  of  his 
resurrection. 

What  was  the  ground  of  their  assurance  ? 
If  we  deny  the  bodily  appearance  of  Jesus 
after  death,  is  not  the  faith  of  the  apostles 
an  illusion?  This  leads  to  another  question. 
What  is  the  proof  of  existence?  Is  it  not 
influence  over  our  lives  ?  Why  do  we  believe 
in  the  existence  of  the  external  world?  We 
do  not  see  it,  we  do  not  hear  it ;  it  is  not  that 
which  any  sense  reports  it  to  be.  One  sense 
says  it  is  glorious  with  color,  another  that  it 
is  colorless;  one  sense  reports   music  in  it, 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  109 

another  reports  eternal  silence ;  one  tells  us 
it  is  hard  and  cold,  another  that  it  is  soft 
and  hot.  These  reports  make  of  the  external 
world  the  consummate  contradiction.  Is  it 
anything  ?  If  it  is  real,  how  do  we  know  it  ? 
Because  of  its  influence  over  us  ;  in  it  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  physical  being.  Our 
minds  are  kept  in  constant  motion  by  its  ap- 
peal. We  cannot  flee  from  its  presence,  we 
cannot  escape  its  power.  It  is  with  us  when 
awake  and  when  asleep,  in  childhood,  in  youth, 
in  manhood,  and  in  old  age.  We  awoke  at 
birth  to  feel  its  breath  upon  our  brow  ;  we 
sink  into  the  sleep  of  death  drawing  upon  its 
life  with  our  last  breath.  Because  of  its  cease- 
less power  over  us  we  believe  in  the  reality  of 
the  external  world. 

Why  do  we  believe  in  the  existence  of  a 
friend  ?  We  have  not  seen  his  mind,  his  soul, 
we  know  not  that  he  is  or  what  he  is  by  direct 
vision.  We  believe  in  him  because  of  his  power 
over  us.  He  has  molded  our  intelligence ;  he 
has  purified  and  enriched  our  heart ;  he  has 
built  up  into  inward  strength  a  great  purpose  ; 


110  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

he  has  been  a  soul  of  gladness  in  our  exist- 
ence, and  because  of  his  power  over  us  we 
believe  that  he  lives.  And  because  that  dead 
body  heeds  not,  hears  not  our  call,  in  no  way 
affects  us,  in  no  way  wields  power  over  us,  we 
believe  that  it  is  lifeless.  Real  being  is  power  : 
whatever  has  power  over  us  is  alive ;  whatever 
is  without  power  over  us  is  dead.  Can  we 
frame  a  better  test  of  real  existence  than  that  ? 
Why  do  we  believe  in  God  ?  No  man  hath 
seen  God  at  any  time,  the  senses  do  not  give 
us  God.  We  have  been  made  by  life  other 
than  our  own,  and  we  think  of  him  as  the 
Lord  and  Giver  of  life;  we  are  touched  in 
ten  thousand  ways,  and  we  think  of  God  as 
the  aboriginal  impulse  under  whatever  affects 
our  beings.  We  are  moved  in  the  pursuit  of 
truth,  we  are  lifted  in  the  love  of  it,  we  are 
drawn  upward  into  obedience  to  it,  our  exist- 
ence is  made  to  take  on  moral  strength  and 
value,  and  our  hearts  are  filled  with  a  thou- 
sand high  desires.  We  believe  that  the  ulti- 
mate source  of  the  grace  that  thus  sweetens 
and  shapes  our  existence  is  God.  He  is  known 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  111 

by  us  because  of  his  power  over  us ;  he  is 
known  as  the  strength  of  our  heart  and  our 
portion  forever  by  the  availing  grace  of  his 
presence.  If  God  should  do  nothing  for  us,  if 
he  should  wield  no  power  over  us,  if  he  should 
send  us  no  calls  to  repentance,  no  contritions 
of  heart,  no  renewing  grace,  no  abiding  in- 
spirations, no  lasting  solace  and  hope,  we 
should  have  no  evidence  of  his  existence.  God 
is  not  known  to  sense ;  he  is  not  known  by 
sense ;  he  is  known  to  the  soul  that  is  renewed 
out  of  his  eternal  grace. 

If  this  test  of  the  living  and  the  real  is  true, 
we  may  well  compose  ourselves  concerning  the 
manner  of  the  resurrection.  Take  Peter  as  an 
example  of  the  believer  in  the  bodily  resur- 
rection of  Jesus.  Which  is  the  greater  witness 
to  Peter  that  his  Lord  is  alive  and  at  the  right 
hand  of  God,  the  fact  that  on  several  mys- 
terious occasions  he  saw  Jesus  after  his  pas- 
sion with  the  eye  of  flesh,  or  the  fact  that 
Jesus  has  given  him  out  of  the  unseen  a  new 
mind,  a  new  heart,  a  new  character,  a  life  in 
which  the  grace  of  the  Lord  is  the  prevailing 


112  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

power?  Which  is  the  greater  witness  to  the 
reality  of  the  risen  Lord,  the  sense  of  Peter, 
or  the  soul  of  Peter  made  like  the  soul  of 
his  Master? 

in 

This  leads  us  to  Paul,  the  great  witness  for 
the  risen  Christ.  The  relation  of  Paul  to  Jesus 
Christ  is  one  of  the  greatest  things  in  the  New 
Testament.  With  Paul  stand  all  believers  in 
Jesus  who  did  not  know  him,  and  all  who 
could  not  know  him  in  his  earthly  life.  This 
apostle  is  the  representative  of  the  believing 
world  after  Jesus  had  disappeared  from  the 
earth.  He  is  not  only  the  apostle  to  the  na- 
tions, he  is  also  the  apostle  to  the  world  that  can 
never  know  Jesus  as  a  human  being  in  time. 

The  other  apostles  were  the  disciples  and 
personal  friends  of  Jesus  during  his  public 
ministry.  They  were  with  him  in  the  fields  of 
Galilee,  by  the  Sea  of  Tiberias,  in  the  wide 
expanses  beyond  the  Jordan,  in  Samaria,  in 
the  wild  solitudes  and  the  crowded  villages 
and  the  cities  of  Judea.    The  earth,  the  sky, 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  113 

and  the  sea,  the  wild  flowers  and  the  singing 
birds,  the  great  sun  as  he  ran  his  daily  course, 
and  the  solemn  stars  were  hallowed  for  those 
disciples  by  the  presence  of  their  Master.  So, 
too,  the  sick,  the  bereaved,  the  sinful,  the 
proud,  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  human 
beings,  —  mothers  and  their  children,  masters 
and  beloved  servants,  publicans  and  sinners, 
despairing  penitents  and  complacent  rascals,  — 
were  another  framework  for  the  life  of  Jesus. 
Yet  again,  these  disciples  had  heard  him 
speak.  They  had  been  taught  by  him ;  they 
had  witnessed  his  works  of  healing  and  the 
perpetual  outflow  of  his  efficacious  sympa- 
thies. They  had  heard  him  speak  to  God,  and 
in  his  prayer  he  had  carried  them  to  the  gate 
of  heaven.  They  had  seen  the  tenderness  and 
the  majesty  of  his  character.  For  them  the 
life  of  God  looked  forth  through  the  life  of 
their  Lord.  This  was  their  unique  experience. 
They  had  a  privilege  from  which  the  succeed- 
ing world  was  forever  barred. 

When  their  Master  was  crucified,  when  he 
had  risen  from  the  dead,  they  were  unable  to 


114  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

think  of  the  heavenly  Lord  without  thinking 
at  the  same  time  of  the  earthly  Master.  Thus 
the  Gospels  came  to  be  written,  because  the 
apostles  wanted  to  preserve  the  precious,  the 
divine  memorials  of  the  temporal  life  of  their 
risen  Lord.  They  continued  to  think  of  Jesus 
in  the  heavens  as  they  had  seen  him  in  time. 
Even  the  Fourth  Gospel,  while  a  philosophy 
of  the  career  of  Jesus,  while  dating  his  being 
from  the  bosom  of  the  Father  and  conduct- 
ing it  after  death  back  into  the  heart  of  the 
Eternal,  while  showing  the  earthly  life  of 
Jesus  as  an  interlude  between  the  eternal 
harmonies  antecedent  and  consequent  to  that 
life,  still  touches  and  colors  that  sublime 
revelation  of  God  with  the  rich  and  tender 
humanities  in  the  temporal  existence  of  the 
Lord.  Look  where  you  will  in  the  record  of 
the  twelve  apostles,  you  find  emphasis  upon 
the  teaching,  the  character,  the  spirit,  and  the 
temporal  life  of  Jesus.  All  this  was  hallowed 
by  his  death,  all  was  transfigured  by  his  resur- 
rection, but  in  substance  it  abides  as  the 
gospel  of  the  early  apostles. 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  115 

To  the  original  disciples  of  Jesus  his  resur- 
rection changed  the  entire  aspect  of  the  world. 
Henceforth  it  lay  as  in  an  everlasting  sunset, 
traveling  in  the  glow  and  fire  of  his  sublime 
memory.  Nature  was  transfigured  through 
her  association  with  him  ;  Galilee  and  Judea, 
Samaria  and  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth, 
were  touched  with  endless  pathos  and  mo- 
ment. Human  beings  in  all  the  sin  and  woe 
and  tragedy  of  their  lives  were  hallowed  out 
of  the  divine  sanctity  of  that  life.  A  mystery 
of  loveliness  had  vanished  from  the  world, 
but  the  memory  of  it  remained  to  illumine 
and  chasten  mankind.  Never  again  could  the 
disciples  look  upon  the  world  as  it  had  ap- 
peared to  them  before  they  knew  Jesus ;  never 
again  could  they  see  a  Christless  humanity ; 
they  lived,  suffered,  achieved,  and  died  in 
the  divine  dream  into  which  Jesus  had  lifted 
mankind;  they  beheld  the  world  eternally 
transfigured  in  his  risen  and  victorious  life. 

We  can  faintly  follow  them  here.  Occasion- 
ally a  sublime  spirit  comes  into  our  sphere  of 
being ;  once  or  twice   in  a  lifetime   it  may 


116  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

have  been  our  privilege  to  behold  the  work 
and  bearing  of  some  indubitable  son  of  God. 
We  looked  upon  his  face  as  if  it  had  been  the 
face  of  an  angel ;  we  felt  the  Divine  presence 
in  his  total  personality;  we  were  moved  to 
a  hidden  wonder  and  love  as  we  drew  near  in 
friendship  to  him.  Then  perhaps  came  the 
sudden  end.  When  we  recovered  our  self- 
possession,  we  knew  that  he  was  indeed  gone, 
but  that  for  us  he  had  left  the  world  still  in 
his  everlasting  evening  glow.  Such  experi- 
ences enable  us  in  a  faint  way  to  gain  some 
idea  of  the  light  and  peace  in  which  the  van- 
ished Christ  forever  left  the  world  for  the 
original  apostles  who  had  known  and  loved 
him  in  the  days  of  his  flesh. 

The  temporal  note  is  absent  from  Paul's 
experience.  He  never  had  any  kind  of  con- 
tact with  Jesus  in  life ;  he  never  saw,  he  did 
not  know  Jesus  while  on  the  earth.  His  first 
contact  with  Jesus  is  as  the  risen  Lord,  as  the 
invisible  Christ.  His  vision  was  never  of  the 
earthly  Jesus ;  it  was  always  and  only  of  the 
heavenly  Jesus.  Paul's  contact  with  Jesus  is 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  117 

identical  with  the  contact  that  men  to-day 
may  have.  He  is,  as  I  have  said,  the  great 
representative  of  the  privilege  of  the  world 
after  Christ  had  left  the  earth;  he  is  our 
representative  believer  in  Christ  and,  espe- 
cially, in  the  risen  Lord. 

Paul  asserts  that  he  had  seen  Jesus,  the 
Lord;  his  great  challenge  is,  Have  I  not 
seen  Jesus,  our  Lord  ?  The  story  was  known 
to  all  the  churches  which  he  had  planted ;  it 
was  known  wherever  he  was  known.  He  told 
it  as  often  as  opportunity  offered,  and  in 
words  of  burning  conviction  and  unforgettable 
power.  In  his  great  address  before  Agrippa 
he  said :  "  Whereupon  as  I  journeyed  to  Da- 
mascus with  the  authority  and  commission  of 
the  chief  priests,  at  midday,  0  king,  I  saw 
on  the  way  a  light  from  heaven,  above  the 
brightness  of  the  sun,  shining  round  about 
me  and  them  that  journeyed  with  me.  And 
when  we  were  all  fallen  to  the  earth,  I  heard 
a  voice  saying  unto  me  in  the  Hebrew  lan- 
guage, Saul,  Saul,  why  persecutest  thou  me  ? 
it  is  hard  for  thee  to  kick  against  the  goad. 


118  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

And  I  said,  Who  art  thou.  Lord  ?  And  the 
Lord  said,  I  am  Jesus  whom  thou  persecutest." 
There  were  doubtless  many  similar  experi- 
ences in  the  career  of  Paul.  This  is  initial 
and  fundamental.  Upon  this  experience  he 
issued  his  challenge,  "  Have  I  not  seen  Jesus, 
our  Lord  ?  " 

Observe,  first  of  all,  that  this  man  had  first- 
hand contact  only  with  the  risen  Lord;  he 
had  only  second-hand  contact  with  the  earthly 
Lord ;  he  was  therefore  surer  of  the  heavenly 
Jesus  than  he  could  be  of  the  earthly  Jesus. 
In  the  reality  of  the  earthly  Jesus  he  believed 
on  testimony ;  in  the  reality  of  the  heavenly 
Jesus  he  believed  on  experience.  He  was  as 
much  surer  of  the  heavenly  Jesus  than  he 
was  of  the  earthly  Jesus  as  experience  is  surer 
than  testimony.  He  appears  to  have  been  free 
from  doubt  as  to  the  reality  of  the  risen 
Christ.  And  the  fact  that  Christ  was  alive 
after  death  made  him  confident  as  the  servant 
of  Christ  that  he  and  all  his  brethren  would 
survive  death  and  live  together  with  the  Lord 
in  the  heavenly  world. 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  119 

Now,  so  far  as  we  have  any  contact  at  all 
with  Jesus,  it  must  be  in  this  way.  We  have 
the  record  of  his  life  and  teaching,  the  record 
of  what  he  said,  of  what  he  did,  of  what  he 
suffered,  of  what  he  was.  But  the  record  is 
simply  a  symbol,  a  sublime  memory.  If  we 
have  contact  with  Jesus  only  through  the 
record,  we  have  contact  only  with  the  precious 
memorials  of  Jesus;  we  are  still  far  away  from 
him.  We  stand  at  this  record  of  his  life  as 
the  disciples  stood  at  the  empty  tomb ;  to  us 
as  to  them  the  salutation  comes :  "  He  is  not 
here ;  for  he  is  risen."  If  we  are  to  have  con- 
tact with  the  living  Christ,  it  can  be  only 
after  the  manner  of  Paul.  We  must  be  met 
by  him  on  our  way  through  the  world ;  we 
must  hear  his  voice  out  of  the  invisible ;  we 
must  get  into  dialogue  with  him  in  the  Eter- 
nal; we  must  be  arrested  by  an  immediate 
question  from  him,  "Why  persecutest  thou 
me?"  We  must  question  him  in  return, — 
"Who  art  thou,  Lord?"  We  must  hear  his 
reply,  "  I  am  Jesus  whom  thou  persecutest." 
This  vision,  under  whatever  form,  is  the  only 


120  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

first-hand  contact  that  we  can  have  with  the 
living  soul  of  Jesus  Christ.  And  where  this 
vision  answers  to  Paul's  in  depth,  in  intensity, 
in  power,  men  to-day  may  be  as  sure  as  he 
was  of  the  heavenly  Lord. 

Notice  next  how  Paul  was  able  to  believe 
in  the  reality  of  his  vision.  He  knew  that  the 
world  was  full  of  dreams  and  delusions.  He 
could  not  doubt  the  reality  of  his  vision,  and 
yet  he  must  often  ask  himself  his  reason  for 
continuing  to  believe  in  it.  What  account 
would  he  be  likely  to  give  to  himself  of  this 
vision  ? 

He  would  doubtless  say  that  this  vision  had 
revolutionized  his  whole  mind  upon  the  sub- 
ject of  Jesus  and  his  religion.  He  had  been 
an  enemy ;  he  was  turned  into  a  friend.  He 
had  been  a  bitter  and  violent  persecutor ;  he 
became  a  preacher  and  defender  of  that  of 
which  he  had  formerly  made  havoc.  That 
vision  changed  his  career. 

He  would  doubtless  add  that  this  vision  had 
changed  his  entire  manner  of  thinking  about 
God,  his  people,  himself,  the  nations  of  man- 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  121 

kind.  That  vision  was  the  germ  for  him  of  a 
new  philosophy  of  man's  life  and  God's  char- 
acter. That  vision  took  possession  of  him  as 
a  seed  takes  possession  of  the  earth.  It  was 
alive  in  his  mind,  it  grew  there,  it  drew  up 
into  itself  all  his  thoughts  about  God  and 
man,  about  the  past  and  the  future.  It  became 
a  mighty  tree,  a  living  organism  of  truth,  a 
philosophy  of  our  human  world.  The  vision 
that  had  changed  his  career  wrought  this  new, 
richer,  and  mightier  mind  within  the  man. 

He  would  further  say  that  it  had  changed 
his  character.  He  had  always  loved  righteous- 
ness ;  but  before  that  vision  came  he  had  been 
mistaken  often ;  he  had  been  in  great  straits 
between  the  command  of  conscience  and  the 
clamor  of  passion ;  he  had  been  brought  in 
his  struggle  after  the  ideal  life  to  the  edge  of 
despair ;  he  had  summed  up  the  sad  endeavor 
in  the  cry,  "  0  wretched  man  that  I  am,  who 
shall  deliver  me  from  the  body  of  this  death  ?  " 
Mistaken,  outward  and  formal  in  his  idea  of 
righteousness,  defeated  and  broken-hearted  in 
his  struggle  after  it,  he  had  been  before  that 


122  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

vision  came;  after  its  visitation  he  had  be- 
come clear  and  sound  in  his  thoughts,  deep  as 
the  nature  of  the  soul  in  his  insights,  and  in 
his  pursuit  of  his  goal,  a  conqueror  and  more 
than  a  conqueror  through  Jesus  Christ.  The 
fruits  of  the  Spirit  now  abounded,  —  love,  joy, 
patience,  hope,  sympathy  with  sinful  and  suf- 
fering men,  above  all,  kindness  and  forbear- 
ance with  stupidity  and  folly.  That  is  nearly 
the  supreme  grace  in  a  mighty  nature,  and 
that  grace  became  regnant  in  Paul. 

He  would  add  still  further  the  character  of 
his  services  and  sufferings.  He  had  gone  over 
a  large  part  of  the  Roman  Empire  several 
times  because  of  that  vision.  He  had  preached 
the  gospel  of  Reconciliation  through  Jesus 
Christ  from  Damascus  and  Jerusalem,  from 
Asia  Minor  through  Europe  as  far  as  Spain. 
He  had  shaken  from  their  pedestals  the  gods 
of  Greece  and  Rome,  he  had  established  Chris- 
tian faith  in  a  new  continent;  and  he  had 
done  it  under  the  sense  of  obligation  to  that 
vision  and  because  of  his  delight  in  its  tran- 
scendent reality. 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  123 

His  sufferings  in  this  service  cannot  be  de- 
scribed, nor  the  sublime  spirit  in  which  they 
were  borne.  They  are  part  of  the  world's 
highest  canticle  of  love  and  woe,  part  of  the 
supreme  litany  of  supreme  races,  part  of  the 
deepest  and  rarest  possession  of  mankind. 
Look  in  upon  this  great  spirit  through  the 
words, "  In  labors  more  abundantly,  in  prisons 
more  abundantly,  in  stripes  above  measure,  in 
deaths  oft.  Of  the  Jews  five  times  received  I 
forty  stripes  save  one.  Thrice  was  I  beaten 
with  rods,  once  was  I  stoned,  thrice  I  suffered 
shipwreck,  a  night  and  a  day  have  I  been  in 
the  deep ;  in  journeyings  often,  in  perils  of 
rivers,  in  perils  of  robbers,  in  perils  of  my 
countrymen,  in  perils  from  the  Gentiles,  in 
perils  in  the  city,  in  perils  in  the  wilderness, 
in  perils  in  the  sea,  in  perils  among  false 
brethren ;  in  labor  and  travail,  in  watchings 
often,  in  hunger  and  thirst,  in  fastings  often, 
in  cold  and  nakedness.  Beside  those  things 
that  are  without,  there  is  that  which  presseth 
upon  me  daily,  anxiety  for  all  the  churches." 
There  is  a  window  into  a  hero's  soul ;  but  for 


124  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

his  enemies,  he  never  would  have  set  this  win- 
dow there.  He  begins  the  story  of  his  suffer- 
ings with  the  confession  that  in  speaking  of 
himself  he  is  speaking  as  a  fool,  being  com- 
pelled to  this  folly  by  foolish  men.  This  career 
of  triumphant  gladness  in  a  world  of  contra- 
diction and  sorrow  came  out  of  that  vision. 

The  highest  wonder  has  yet  to  be  named. 
This  man  Paul  was  one  of  the  great  original 
personalities  of  the  world.  His  nature  was 
great  in  every  way ;  it  was  distinctly  original. 
In  its  force  it  has  effected  more  in  the  civil- 
ization of  Europe  than  any  other  that  can  be 
named.  Never  did  so  great  a  personality  sail 
the  Mediterranean  Sea  or  cover  the  surround- 
ing shores  with  its  journeys.  And  yet  this 
mighty  personality  lived  out  of  the  superior 
and  supernal  personality  given  in  that  vision. 
He  came  to  say  that  he  lived,  yet  not  he  but 
Christ  lived  in  him,  that  Christ  was  within 
him  the  hope  of  glory ;  so  complete,  so  con- 
tinuous, so  full  of  steadiness  and  rapt  feeling, 
was  this  surrender  of  the  soul  of  Paul  in  time 
to  the  soul  of  Jesus  in  eternity. 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  125 

This  is  the  outline  of  Paul's  reason  for  his 
faith  in  the  risen  Lord.  The  Lord  Jesus  had 
changed  him  from  a  persecutor  to  a  preacher 
of  the  gospel;  he  had  changed  the  entire 
organism  of  his  thinking;  he  had  changed 
his  experience  from  despair  to  triumph  as  a 
servant  of  the  moral  ideal ;  he  had  sent  him 
over  an  empire  as  a  prophet  of  the  Eternal 
love ;  he  had  enabled  him  to  endure  nameless 
sufferings  and  glory  in  them  that  he  might 
thereby  show  forth  the  power  of  his  Master. 
Paul's  life  came  out  of  his  faith  in  the  risen 
Lord.  With  such  a  life  as  issue,  could  he 
reasonably  doubt  the  Divine  reality  of  the 
cause?  Not  till  something  can  come  from 
nothing,  not  till  wholesome  living  can  come 
from  delusions,  not  till  it  can  be  shown  that 
all  that  is  deepest  and  divinest  in  the  life  of 
man  comes  from  lies,  shall  we  dare  to  say 
that  Paul's  faith  in  the  reality  of  his  vision 
of  the  risen  Lord  is  vain. 

The  question  comes,  Is  this  assurance  of 
the  risen  Lord  open  to  us?  In  reading  his 
words,  in  dwelling  upon  the  stories  of  his 


126  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

resurrection,  in  pondering  what  he  has  been 
to  his  disciples  in  all  these  centuries,  there 
has  come  upon  us  a  vision  of  Jesus  as  alive 
and  at  the  right  hand  of  God.  We  now  ask 
this  question :  How  can  we  be  sure  that  Jesus 
is  alive,  that  he  is  the  risen  Lord? 

If  we  have  met  him  on  our  way  to  an  evil 
goal,  if  his  spirit  has  risen  out  of  his  words 
and  stood  across  the  path  of  our  evil  progress, 
if  he  has  arrested  us  in  shameful  thoughts 
or  intentions,  if  he  has  blinded  us  with  excess 
of  light  on  some  secret  sin,  or  some  duty  that 
we  have  scorned,  if  he  by  his  moral  illumina- 
tion and  appeal  has  made  it  impossible  for  us 
to  go  on  in  our  wickedness,  if  he  has  turned 
us  from  wild  infatuation  with  error  and 
wrong  to  duty  and  to  God,  there  is  one  tre- 
mendous witness  to  the  reality  of  our  risen 
Lord.  He  has  risen  up  like  a  new  watershed 
in  our  existence;  he  has  turned  our  whole 
being  in  a  new  direction;  he  has  made  it 
impossible  that  we  should  again  flow  where 
we  have  flowed,  that  we  should  again  seek 
that  old  and  evil  goal. 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  127 

Have  we  gone  on  from  this  initial  experi- 
ence as  Paul  did  ?  Have  we  come  to  read  the 
meaning  of  the  soul,  the  family,  the  nation, 
the  history  of  man,  the  total  of  our  human 
existence,  and  the  character  of  the  Eternal 
through  the  eyes  of  Jesus?  Have  we  come 
into  a  body  of  ideas  of  which  he  is  the  teacher 
and  inspirer  ?  Have  we  found  under  his  in- 
fluence duty  a  delight,  obligation  a  privilege, 
service  a  song?  Is  there  in  progress  within 
us  a  vast  alienation  from  the  selfish,  the 
brutal  life,  a  vast  reconciliation  to  the  will 
of  God  ?  If  this  or  anything  like  this  is  true, 
there  is  a  second  witness  to  the  reality  of  the 
risen  Lord. 

Have  we  ever  done  anything  for  his  sake  ? 
Have  we  confessed  his  name  before  men,  stood 
forth  before  the  world  in  the  solemn  privilege 
of  membership  in  his  kingdom,  given  a  cup 
of  cold  water  because  we  saw  in  the  needy 
one  his  brother,  clothed  the  destitute,  visited 
the  sick,  remembered  the  forgotten,  gone  on 
our  way  doing  good  following  in  his  footsteps, 
holding  forth  through  a  just  and  tender  char- 


128  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

acter  his  word  of  life,  joining  with  all  who 
truly  love  him  in  the  service  of  the  souls  of 
men,  as  poor  yet  making  many  rich,  as  sorrow- 
ful yet  always  rejoicing,  as  having  nothing 
yet  possessing  all  things  ?  If  this  is  the  char- 
acter of  our  life,  or  anything  the  least  like 
this,  we  have  still  another  witness  to  the 
reality  of  the  Lord  in  heaven. 

The  strength  of  the  entire  New  Testament 
is  the  assurance  that  Jesus  is  alive.  The  assur- 
ance came  to  the  twelve  through  what  they 
believed  to  be  physical  appearances.  The 
assurance  came  to  Paul  through  a  vision, 
through  an  experience  in  his  mind  and  soul. 
The  assurance  is  the  supreme  thing,  and  con- 
cerning this  all  the  apostles  are  at  one.  The 
assurance  of  Paul  is  mightier  to-day  because 
we  may  gain  it  for  ourselves.  We  cannot  see 
the  empty  grave,  we  cannot  walk  with  Jesus 
from  Jerusalem  to  Emmaus ;  we  cannot  hear 
him  speak  to  us  from  the  shore  of  the  sea, 
calling  us  to  dine.  The  form  of  assurance 
peculiar  to  the  original  apostles  is  inaccessible 
to  us.  If  their  faith  becomes  our  faith,  it  is 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  129 

through  our  faith  in  them.  With  the  form 
of  assurance  for  which  Paul  stands  it  is  differ- 
ent. His  whole  new  being  was  the  witness  of 
the  truth  of  his  faith;  he  had  no  eye-sight, 
no  outward  material  evidence;  it  was  all  a 
transaction  in  his  intellect  and  character. 
When  we  have  his  experience  or  something 
like  it,  we  shall  have  his  assurance.  For  those 
who  do  not  think,  the  outward  witness,  the 
eye-sight  of  the  apostles  is  easy ;  it  is  a  wit- 
ness that  may  be  accepted  by  selfish  and  god- 
less men.  For  men  who  think,  who  wonder 
how  these  things  can  be,  the  bodily  resur- 
rection of  Jesus  is  a  puzzle,  and  the  peace 
longed  for  does  not  come.  The  inward 
witness  from  all  the  apostles,  and  especially 
from  Paul,  is  nothing  to  the  unspiritual 
man ;  it  can  be  gained  only  through  personal 
experience,  only  through  renewal  in  Christ, 
only  through  service  under  him,  only  by  the 
path  of  a  great  soul.  To  this  our  Lord  is 
bringing  us.  If  we  will  not  rise  into  new- 
ness of  life  with  Christ,  we  can  never  know 
him.  When  with  him  we  stand  at  our  being's 


130  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

height,  we  shall  know  that  our  Redeemer 
liveth  ;  life  comes  from  life,  —  the  life  of  the 
body  from  the  life  of  the  body,  the  life  of  the 
soul  from  the  life  of  the  soul.  If  we  live  in 
Christ,  if  we  live  by  him,  when  we  look  up 
we  shall  see  him,  according  to  his  word,  on 
the  clouds  of  heaven,  we  shall  see  him  as 
Stephen  beheld  him  at  the  right  hand  of  God. 
I  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  fate  of  Jesus 
and  his  gospel  is  in  no  way  bound  up  with 
the  fate  of  miracle.  It  is  evident,  even  if 
naturalism  is  to  control  men's  views  of  all 
history,  that  the  really  great  things  in  Christ 
and  his  gospel  abide.  His  teaching  abides,  his 
character  is  safe,  his  spiritual  leadership  is 
unquestioned.  He  is  still  our  Prophet,  Priest, 
and  King.  His  risen  and  glorified  life  in  God 
remains  attested  by  the  witness  of  life.  Only 
the  fringe  of  his  evangelical  career  is  torn 
away.  We  lose  the  stilling  of  the  storm,  the 
walking  on  the  sea,  the  feeding  of  the  mul- 
titudes, the  raising  of  the  widow's  only  son 
and  the  dead  Lazarus.  We  lose  something, 
no  doubt,  and  the  loss,  if  it  should  become 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  MIRACLE  131 

inevitable,  will  be  painful  to  many.  But  even 
here  there  is  evidence  of  the  greatness  of  our 
Lord.  That  he  wrought  wonders  upon  the 
physical  life  of  men  is  beyond  dispute.  That 
he  gained  access  to  the  souls  of  the  plain 
people  by  his  marvelous  power  as  the  healer 
of  physical  distress  is  not  open  to  question. 
That  he  took  the  imagination  of  the  people 
captive  is  attested  by  the  tradition  of  wonders 
that  came  to  invest  his  career.  To  all  seri- 
ous minds,  part  of  the  evidence  of  the  power 
of  Jesus  Christ  will  always  be  the  epic  of  mira- 
cle embedded  in  his  career.  How  great  that 
epic  is,  it  would  be  difficult  to  say ;  of  what 
divine  things  it  is  the  reflection,  men  may  one 
day  become  noble  enough  to  discover. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    CHRISTIAN    LIFE    AND   MIRACLE 


"T XTHAT  are  the  essential  things  in  the 
f  "  faith,  in  the  ideals,  in  the  experience 
and  hope  of  a  disciple  of  Jesus  Christ  to-day  ? 
It  may  be  said  that  the  disciple  of  to-day 
tries  to  take  his  place  in  the  school  of  Christ. 
Somehow  the  Master  becomes  to  him  a  liv- 
ing presence;  the  recorded  remark,  sermon, 
and  parable  are  heard  as  if  from  the  lips  of 
the  Divine  speaker ;  the  time,  the  scene,  and 
the  events  of  the  evangelical  record  yield  the 
vision  of  the  great  Teacher.  Other  disciples 
surround  the  Lord,  and  among  them  the 
honest  and  devout  disciple  of  to-day. 

In  the  school  of  Christ,  recovered  by  the 
religious  imagination  working  upon  the  Gos- 
pels, the  disciple  of  to-day  tries  to  read 
the  meaning  of  the  universe  and  the  purpose 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    133 

and  scope  of  human  life  through  the  mind  of 
Jesus.  He  looks  at  the  Infinite  through  the 
soul  of  Jesus  and  says  with  him,  "  Our  Father 
who  art  in  heaven";  he  looks  upon  his  fellow 
men  through  that  same  Divine  soul,  and  he 
sees  that  they  are  his  brothers,  bone  of  his 
bone  and  flesh  of  his  flesh ;  he  looks  again, 
and  this  time  the  vision  of  Jesus  leads  him  to 
unite  in  one  vast  family  the  Father  in  heaven 
and  his  children  in  the  earth.  He  is  further 
led  by  his  Teacher  to  see  that  the  total  good 
of  man  is  conveyed  in  the  great  prayer,  "  Thy 
kingdom  come,  Thy  will  be  done  in  earth  as 
it  is  in  heaven."  Thus  the  disciple  of  to-day 
tries  to  gain  the  vision  of  Jesus,  to  form  his 
intellect  in  that  vision,  to  make  it  the  sub- 
stance and  spirit  of  his  philosophy  of  human 
existence  and  of  the  universe  in  which  that  ex- 
istence finds  itself. 

There  is  now  a  question  of  the  moral  nature 
to  be  considered,  a  relation  of  f  eeling  and  will 
to  the  vision  of  Jesus.  The  disciple  of  to-day 
who  tries  to  think  of  God  and  man  more  and 
more  as  Christ  thought  of  them  sees  that  this 


134  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

ideal  involves  two  others.  It  sets  before  him 
the  ideal  of  the  heart  and  of  the  active  spirit. 
He  must  more  and  more  feel  toward  God  and 
man  as  Jesus  felt;  he  must  more  and  more 
behave  as  Jesus  behaved.  He  must  aim  to 
reproduce  in  himself  the  most  perfect  trust  in 
the  righteous  will  of  God  and  take  into  his 
being  out  of  the  being  of  the  Highest  his 
eternal  magnanimity.  He  must  consider  the 
world  of  men  as  on  the  whole  a  noble  but 
awful  tragedy ;  he  must  regard  it  with  patience, 
sympathy,  compassion  ;  his  heart  must  aim  at 
becoming  more  and  more  the  heart  of  Christ. 
To  this  he  must  add  the  force  of  a  Christian 
will.  He  entertains  his  Master's  vision  of  the 
kingdom  of  God,  and  toward  the  progressive 
realization  of  that  kingdom  in  the  face  of  the 
selfishness  and  brutality  of  the  world  he  con- 
secrates himself.  This  is  the  great  test,  as  it 
is  the  chief  privilege,  of  his  discipleship.  He 
sees  that  finally  all  the  worth  of  the  intellect 
and  the  heart  come  to  the  test  of  action. 
Religion  is  only  a  potentiality  while  it  remains 
vision  and  passion  ;  only  as  vision  and  passion 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    135 

press  for  expression  in  action  do  they  become 
real.  The  Christian  religion  is  ultimately  a 
vision  and  a  passion  that  declare  themselves 
as  true  through  the  floodgates  of  the  trium- 
phant good  will.  Good  will  is  the  last  and 
highest  beatitude  of  God;  good  will  is  the 
final  grace  of  the  Lord  Jesus;  good  will  is 
the  ultimate  and  sure  test  of  Christian  disci- 
pleship  yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever. 

In  addition  to  faith  and  ideals  the  disciple 
of  Jesus  has  hopes.  His  greatest  hope  for 
himself  is  that  some  day  he  shall  answer  in 
moral  integrity  and  purity  to  the  soul  of  his 
Master.  His  greatest  hope  for  human  society 
is  the  advent  of  the  new  heaven  and  the  new 
earth  wherein  shall  dwell  righteousness.  Out 
of  these  sovereign  moral  hopes  comes  the  hope 
of  life  everlasting,  the  conservation  of  all 
genuine  love,  the  renewal  of  earth's  essential 
relationships  in  the  eternal  world,  the  redemp- 
tion of  man,  and  the  society  of  man  redeemed 
in  the  heavenly  sphere. 

In  this  account  of  the  faith,  the  ideals, 
and  the  hopes  of  the  disciple  of  Christ  to- 


136  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

day,  I  have  said  nothing  about  miracle.  Is 
this  an  oversight,  or  is  it  natural  or  right  ? 
The  question  may  now  be  raised  upon  what  do 
Christian  men  and  women  live  to-day?  Do 
we  live  upon  miracle  or  upon  the  Spirit? 
Do  we  depend  upon  the  revelation  of  Spirit 
through  the  miraculous  or  through  the  nat- 
ural ?  Such  a  question  brings  one  back  to  the 
method  of  God  in  dealing  with  human  beings 
to-day.  Miracles  do  not  occur  in  our  genera- 
tion. Mortal  sickness  is  not  healed,  our  dead 
are  not  brought  back  to  life,  there  is  no  voice 
that  stills  the  tempests  on  our  seas,  no  one 
can  bid  us  walk  upon  the  waters  and  save  us 
when  we  fail  through  want  of  faith,  no  gra- 
cious hand  to-day  multiplies  the  meagre  food- 
supply  in  starving  homes. 

The  interest  of  suffering  men  and  women 
to-day  in  these  miracles  of  our  Lord  must  be  a 
pathetic  interest.  The  cry  must  come  up  from 
bereaved  parents, "  He  restored  to  life  the  little 
girl  of  Jairus,  why  does  he  not  restore  our 
child?  "  "  He  raised  from  the  bier  in  Nain  the 
widow's  only  son,  why  does  he  not  give  me 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    137 

back  my  strong  staff  and  beautiful  rod  ?"  cries 
another  solitary  mourner.  He  had  compas- 
sion upon  the  bereaved  sisters  in  Bethany  and 
raised  their  brother  from  death,  and  has  he 
no  pity  upon  similar  sorrow  now?  The  lame, 
the  halt,  the  blind,  and  the  leper  are  still  with 
us,  but  there  is  no  helper.  What  avails  it 
for  our  sufferers  to  read  of  the  deliverance 
wrought  for  a  few  of  the  multitudes  that  suf- 
fered in  that  ancient  time  ?  For  that  ancient 
world  the  relief  was  meagre  when  measured 
against  the  immeasurable  need  and  agony. 
And  when  one  surveys  the  world  to-day,  even 
that  mitigation  is  nowhere  to  be  found ; 
among  sane  minds  it  is  nowhere  expected. 
The  natural  order  is  supreme ;  and  we  do  not 
dream  that  God  will  work  miracles  in  our 
behalf,  or  in  behalf  of  any  man.  When  our 
children  are  taken  out  of  our  arms,  we  do  not 
look  for  their  return.  We  say  with  a  great 
sorrowing  father  three  thousand  years  ago, 
"  I  shall  go  to  him,  but  he  shall  not  return  to 
me."  There  is  no  discharge  in  this  war ;  there 
is  none,  and  we  expect  none.  We  in  our  gen- 


138  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

eration  are  beset  behind  and  before  and  on 
either  side  by  a  natural  order  fixed  as  fate. 

This  sense  of  law  determines  the  spiritual 
life  of  reasonable  men.  Whether  we  accept  or 
deny  the  miracles  of  Jesus,  we  pass  them  by, 
or  we  treat  them  as  symbols  of  spiritual  truth. 
We  do  not  live  upon  the  wonders  of  the 
Lord ;  we  live  upon  his  words,  his  thoughts, 
his  prayers,  his  spirit.  We  commune  with  him 
on  the  way.  The  secret  of  life  is  to  know 
him,  to  share  his  vision,  to  become  partakers 
of  his  passion,  to  rise  with  him  to  newness  of 
life.  We  support  ourselves  by  his  great  utter- 
ances :  "  He  that  believeth  on  me  shall  not 
see  death.  Because  I  live,  ye  shall  live  also. 
Lo,  I  am  with  you  alway,  even  unto  the  end 
of  the  world."  The  experience  of  Paul  sets 
the  ideal  for  all  disciples:  "Nevertheless  I 
live,  yet  not  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me."  Here 
we  are  out  of  the  region  of  miracle ;  we  are 
in  a  far  higher  world,  we  are  in  the  world  of 
soul  and  love  and  triumphant  life. 

I  have  spoken  of  Paul  as  the  most  impress- 
ive witness  for  the  faith  in  the  risen  Lord. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    139 

I  now  say  that  the  chief  significance  of  this 
faith  for  Paul  was  in  the  moral  assurance  it 
brought  in  his  fight  for  righteousness.  He 
had  indeed  seen  Jesus ;  he  knew  that  his  Lord 
was  risen  and  reigning,  but  beyond  this,  the 
chief  moment  of  Jesus  to  Paul  was  as  the  re- 
vealer  and  mediator  of  the  Infinite  righteous- 
ness. Dearly  had  Paul  loved  righteousness 
from  his  earliest  years,  and  sorely  had  he 
failed  to  gain  it.  The  vision  of  Jesus  became 
for  him  a  new  conception  of  righteousness,  a 
new  power  of  achievement  and  a  new  hope. 
It  is  therefore  not  an  exaggeration  to  say  that 
the  significance  of  Jesus  to  Paul  was  signifi- 
cance for  the  spirit.  His  great  words  are, 
"Even  though  we  have  known  Christ  after 
the  flesh,  yet  now  we  know  him  so  no  more." 
In  the  writings  ascribed  to  the  Apostle 
John  great  emphasis  is  laid  upon  the  fact 
that  Jesus  Christ  has  come  in  the  flesh.  The 
historical  life  of  Jesus  is  inexpressibly  dear 
and  important  to  this  apostle.  It  is  dear  and 
important  as  the  expression  of  the  sovereign 
soul  of  his  Master,  as  the  revelation  of  the 


140  RELIGION   AND  MIRACLE 

eternal  love  of  God.  His  greatest  words  are : 
God  is  light,  and  in  him  is  no  darkness  at 
all "  ;  and  to  this  corresponds  the  self-charac- 
terization of  Jesus  in  the  Fourth  Gospel,  for 
which  we  are  plainly  indebted  to  the  same 
writer :  "I  am  the  light  of  the  world :  he 
that  followeth  me  shall  not  walk  in  the  dark- 
ness, but  shall  have  the  light  of  life."  The 
other  words  of  this  apostle,  which  some  will 
consider  even  greater  than  those  just  quoted, 
are:  "  God  is  love."  And  of  this  eternal  love 
Jesus  Christ  is  the  one  adequate  assurance. 
Here  again  the  whole  higher  character  of 
Christianity  is  in  the  realm  of  the  spirit. 

If  we  look  into  the  minds  of  the  greater 
witnesses  of  our  faith  in  Christian  history,  we 
shall  find  the  same  general  result.  For  Clement 
of  Alexandria  and  Origen  Jesus  was  revealer 
and  life-giver.  The  experience  of  Augustine 
is  a  new  version  of  the  experience  of  Paul ; 
the  gospel  was  a  message  to  his  sinful  soul,  a 
message  that  became  a  deliverance.  Augus- 
tine's greatest  book  is  his  "  Confessions  "  ;  it 
contains  the  heart  of  his  Christian  faith,  and 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    141 

into  its  words  he  has  poured  the  fullness  of 
his  mind  and  spirit.  It  is  a  book  that  can 
never  grow  old;  it  is  full  of  God,  full  of 
Christ,  full  of  the  soul  to  whom  God  in  Christ 
had  become  perpetual  vision  and  eternal  solace. 
Luther  goes  back  through  Augustine  to  Paul, 
and  righteousness  by  faith  is  the  cry  with 
which  he  awakened  Europe.  Calvin  dwells 
not  upon  miracle,  but  upon  the  sovereign  God. 
Indeed,  wherever  one  looks  among  the  really 
great  souls,  one  finds  them  building  either 
upon  ideas,  or  upon  the  gracious  experience 
into  which  these  ideas  are  translated  by  the 
Holy  Spirit.  Cardinal  Newman  writes  an 
acute  and  sophistical  essay  on  ecclesiastical 
miracles,  and  good  men  pass  it  by  in  pity. 
He  writes  of  the  visitations  of  God  to  the 
souls  of  men,  and  the  world  still  reads  what 
is  written.  Newman,  the  consummate  special 
pleader  for  incredible  dogmas,  is  the  subject 
of  compassion ;  Newman,  the  religious  genius, 
is  dear  to  the  whole  Christian  church.  In  his 
greatest  book  Bushnell  writes  a  chapter  on 
miracles,  in  which  to-day  no  one  has  any  real 


142  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

interest;  he  writes  sermons  for  the  human 
spirit  that  will  be  a  possession  for  many  gener- 
ations. Edwards  is  more  and  more  engaging 
profound  minds,  not  so  much  on  account  of 
his  scheme  of  doctrine,  as  on  account  of  the 
depth  and  splendor  of  his  religious  experience. 
The  greatest  influence  on  Christian  faith  in 
the  nineteenth  century  came  from  Schleier- 
macher  and  Maurice ;  and  in  both  these  think- 
ers the  chief  excellence  is  range  of  spiritual 
vision  and  depth  of  life. 

If  I  am  right  in  these  remarks,  religious  men 
are  men  of  the  spirit,  Christian  men  are  men  of 
the  spirit,  and  the  sphere  in  which  they  live  is 
not  the  world  of  miracle,  but  the  world  of  Di- 
vine life.  For  them  law  is  the  speech  of  God? 
and  as  our  own  tongue  in  its  order  of  moods 
and  tenses,  in  its  living  and  beautiful  idioms,  is 
the  best  possible  instrument  for  the  expression 
of  the  thought  and  love  and  character  of  friend 
or  parent  or  child,  as  we  should  be  put  to 
confusion  if  the  human  soul  in  its  regard  for 
us  should  depart  from  the  law  of  reasonable 
speech,  so  modern  religious  men  think  of  God. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    143 

The  order  of  nature  is  his  speech;  its  laws 
are  the  idioms  of  his  tongue ;  its  fixed  ways 
are  the  steadfast  manner  of  his  language; 
and  in  and  through  this  instrument  he  dis- 
covers to  the  religious  soul  his  mind  and  heart. 
The  natural  order  is  thus  crowded  with  ideas ; 
through  it  ideas  break  as  from  human  speech ; 
from  it  they  work  their  power  as  from  the 
countenance  of  man.  Here  indeed  we  have 
our  chief  example  of  the  union  of  mechanism 
and  spirit.  Human  life  is  a  mechanism  of 
cause  and  effect,  it  is  life  under  law  —  ana- 
tomical, physiological,  economical,  terrestrial. 
It  is  an  organism  in  strict  subjection  to  law; 
birth,  growth,  maturity,  decline,  and  death 
are  events  in  a  living  organism  under  law; 
but  as  Aristotle  said  long  ago,  the  truth  or 
meaning  of  this  organism  is  spirit.  Death  is 
organism  minus  the  spirit  that  gives  it  truth 
and  meaning.  The  infant  becomes  to  its 
mother,  when  only  a  few  months  old,  a  mind 
and  heart.  The  charm  of  its  manner  is  the 
charm  of  a  soul  learning  to  express  itself 
through  the  law-bound  organism  in  which  it 


144  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

lives.  The  smile  of  an  infant  is  a  fact  in  phys- 
iology; it  is  an  event  under  physiological 
law ;  and  at  the  same  time  it  is  a  radiant  dis- 
closure of  spirit.  Again  and  again  the  mother 
will  work  and  wait  for  the  contraction  of  those 
muscles,  as  men  were  wont  to  wait  till  the 
descent  of  an  angel  troubled  the  pool,  that 
the  soul  of  her  child  may  become  radiantly 
visible.  Through  life  the  same  law  holds. 
Looks  of  infinite  tenderness  are  the  supreme 
signs  between  those  who  love ;  these  looks  at 
meeting  and  parting,  at  all  the  crises  and 
surprises  of  existence,  in  life  and  in  death, 
are  events  of  physiology ;  they  take  place  in 
a  purely  natural  way;  they  are  the  orderly 
phases  of  the  physical  organism,  and  think  of 
the  worlds  of  meaning,  high,  solemn,  beau- 
tiful, that  they  bear  and  utter.  The  body 
of  a  friend  is  the  noble  and  dear  mechanism 
through  which  the  soul  declares  its  invio- 
lable order  of  truth,  love,  character.  When 
Ruth  revealed  her  soul  to  Naomi,  she  did 
it  through  word,  voice,  accent,  attitude,  man- 
ner, look.    These  were  all  regular  phases  of 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    145 

her  physical  existence ;  and  how  the  interior 
world  of  honor  stood  in  them,  and  how  great 
they  became  as  the  servants  of  that  world: 
"  Intreat  me  not  to  leave  thee,  and  to  return 
from  following  after  thee:  for  whither  thou 
goest,  I  will  go ;  and  where  thou  lodgest,  I 
will  lodge :  thy  people  shall  be  my  people, 
and  thy  God  my  God :  where  thou  diest,  will 
I  die,  and  there  will  I  be  buried :  the  Lord  do 
so  to  me,  and  more  also,  if  aught  but  death 
part  thee  and  me."  There  in  human  life  is 
mechanism  in  the  service  of  spirit,  and  the 
mechanism  is  hallowed  by  the  burden  that  it 
is  made  to  bear.  When  the  blind  (Edipus 
hears  the  voice  of  Antigone  and  is  led  forth 
by  her,  when  Lear,  bound  upon  a  wheel  of 
fire,  looks  up  into  the  face  of  Cordelia,  does 
not  the  mechanism  of  the  human  body  declare 
a  world  of  soul?  In  our  human  life  mechanism 
and  spirit  meet ;  here  this  mechanism  is  not 
in  the  way  of  spirit ;  it  is  an  essential  servant, 
and  as  such  it  stands  in  honor. 

This   is  the  simplest   path  to    the   world 
of  the  Eternal  Spirit.  In  the  cosmos  and  in 


146  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

human  society  he  dwells  and  utters  himself. 
We  construe  the  universe  in  the  light  of  our 
own  life;  we  are  mechanism  and  spirit;  in 
our  existence  mechanism  is  the  indispensable 
servant  of  spirit;  and  so  we  dare  to  think 
of  God.  His  laws  in  nature  are  his  ways  of 
revealing  the  content  of  his  mind  there ;  his 
ways  with  man  are  the  fixed  order  through 
which  he  utters  his  regard  for  him.  When 
man  becomes  a  religious  soul,  when  love  flows 
between  the  finite  soul  and  the  Infinite,  the 
order  of  life  and  death,  the  mechanism  of 
nature  in  which  our  being  is  set,  is  trans- 
figured. In  that  order  there  is  felt  the  pressure 
of  God's  hand,  the  fullness  of  God's  smile, 
the  infinite  meaning  in  the  wild  tragedy  of 
existence,  the  depth  of  God's  good  will. 

Look  now  at  the  career  of  Jesus  from  this 
point  of  view.  His  body  is  the  mechanism 
that  bears  the  burden  of  his  great  soul.  His 
soul  is  an  order  of  thoughts  and  feelings  and 
purposes  that  bears  in  itself  the  consciousness 
of  God  and  his  thoughts  and  feelings  and 
purposes  toward  man.  The  life  of  Jesus  serves 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    147 

a  double  end:  it  expresses  his  soul;  it  also 
expresses  the  soul  of  God  as  God  lives  in  him. 
All  this  is  independent  of  miracle ;  it  does 
not  even  suggest  miracle.  Mechanism  of  body 
is  the  basis  of  this  expression  of  Jesus  as  he 
lives  in  God.  The  word  was  made  flesh ;  the 
organism  of  the  body  became  the  revealer  of 
the  spirit.  At  every  step  forward  in  his  career 
this  is  the  central  truth  in  the  life  of  Jesus. 
He  spoke,  he  lived  a  human  life  under  law : 
and  at  every  turn  his  speech,  his  life,  bore  the 
burden  of  a  divine  meaning.  His  infancy  in 
Bethlehem,  his  boyhood  and  youth  in  Naza- 
reth, his  public  ministry  of  teaching  and  heal- 
ing, the  phases  of  his  organic  existence,  were 
the  instruments  of  his  spirit,  and  of  God  as 
God  lived  in  his  spirit.  Thus  through  the 
temporal  life  of  Jesus  in  part  and  in  whole 
the  Eternal  was  uttered.  The  effect  upon  the 
religious  soul  of  the  natural  order  of  the  life  of 
Jesus  as  the  bearer  and  revealer  of  the  life 
of  God  may  find  its  symbol  in  the  effect  upon 
the  penitent  thief  of  these  words :  "  To-day 
shalt  thou  be  with  me  in  Paradise."  Here  is 


148  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

the  mechanism  of  the  human  voice.  Could 
any  miracle  equal  the  sweetness  and  the  power 
of  that  mechanism  ?  Could  any  wonder  bear 
to  a  soul  in  darkness  the  assurance  of  the 
Eternal  conveyed  by  that  mechanism?  As 
was  the  voice  of  Jesus  then,  such  was  his 
whole  life,  an  order  of  nature  revealing  the 
eternal  kingdom  of  the  spirit. 

n 

The  final  cause  of  the  discipline  in  doubt 
to  which  Christian  men  are  subjected  in  our 
time  would  seem  to  be  that  they  may  be 
brought  back  to  the  world  of  the  spirit  that 
fills  and  transfigures  the  natural  order  of  the 
cosmos  and  of  human  life.  The  great  condi- 
tion of  this  mighty  return  to  the  immediate 
world  of  the  spirit  is  freedom.  For  the  first 
time  since  the  apostolic  age,  the  Christian  re- 
ligion is  held  and  studied  in  our  day  in  the 
atmosphere  of  freedom.  For  Protestantism, 
all  religion  is  the  subject  of  study  in  the  world 
of  freedom ;  and  for  Catholicism,  religion  is 
engaged  in  a  determined  struggle  to  regard 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    149 

itself  in  the  light  of  the  free  intellect.  This 
is  something  new  under  the  sun.  Never  has 
freedom  of  mind  so  reigned  in  the  things  of 
the  spirit  as  it  reigns  to-day.  Indeed,  compul- 
sion has  reigned  so  long  in  the  sphere  of  faith 
that  great  souls  have  been  again  and  again 
tormented  with  the  question  whether  they 
were  believers  on  authority,  or  on  insight  into 
the  essential  nature  of  their  belief.  Never  till 
this  day  has  faith  had  the  opportunity  that 
now  confronts  it,  the  opportunity  to  declare 
through  complete  intellectual  freedom  what 
is  incidental  in  its  own  life  and  what  is  essen- 
tial and  permanent.  For  Christian  faith  this 
inexpressible  privilege  has  been  long  in  com- 
ing, and  now  that  it  is  here  we  hail  it  as 
a  vast  hope.  This  hope  may  be  to  many  a 
terrible  visitation  of  fear.  Even  then  it  can- 
not be  denied  that  freedom  has  arrived.  What 
Kant  said  of  his  age  is  much  more  true  of  our 
age :  "  This  may  be  best  characterized  as  the 
age  of  criticism  —  a  criticism  to  which  every- 
thing must  submit."  A  new  mood  has  arisen 
in  the  sphere  of  religion ;  it  fills  the  educated 


150  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

world;  it  reaches  the  entire  intelligence  of 
the  time.  Is  this  new  mood  for  better,  or  for 
worse?  What  of  the  future  of  our  faith  at 
its  hands  ?  What  of  the  future  of  those  be- 
liefs that  have  hitherto  been  the  perennial 
fountain,  or  at  least  the  indispensable  chan- 
nel, of  our  greatest  inspirations  ?  Are  we  per- 
mitted now  to  work  and  to  feel  as  of  old? 
Are  we  forbidden  to  think  as  of  old?  How 
long  can  work  and  feeling  go  forward  when 
thought  has  lost  its  hold  upon  the  Eternal  ? 
Does  the  change  in  thought  mean  only  a 
vaster  thought  and  thus  a  profounder  feeling, 
and  a  mightier  activity  for  Christian  right- 
eousness ?  In  the  new  mood  of  the  age,  are 
we  confronted,  like  ancient  Israel,  by  a  pos- 
sible blessing  and  a  possible  curse?  In  our 
hope  and  in  our  fear  is  there  balm  in  Gilead  ? 
Is  there  a  physician  there?  The  intellectual 
world,  the  spiritual  world,  the  Christian  world 
is  in  movement.  Whither  is  it  bound  ?  Who 
is  its  leader  and  Lord  ?  When  the  sea  breaks 
its  immemorial  bounds,  is  there  any  law  or 
force  upon  which  one  may  look  for  the  con- 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    151 

trol  of  the  fearful  flood?  When  Christian 
scholars,  teachers,  preachers,  disciples  of  the 
Lord  have,  in  one  degree  or  another,  aban- 
doned immemorial  traditions,  is  there  any 
Guide  on  whom  "we  may  rely  for  the  conser- 
vation of  the  best  in  history,  and  for  the  con- 
trol and  happy  issue  of  the  whole  daring 
movement  of  man's  spirit? 

There  is  indeed  much  confusion  to-day  in 
the  field  of  belief,  and  much  need  of  patience. 
Parents  have  dedicated  to  the  ministry  of 
Christ  the  son  whose  entire  existence  has  been 
covered  by  their  prayers.  They  have  sent  him 
to  college,  and  there  he  has  stood  in  the  heart 
of  the  world's  great  debate  between  theism 
and  atheism,  a  knowable  God  and  an  unknow- 
able, history  as  an  optimism  and  history  as 
the  interminable  desert  of  despair.  In  college 
he  has  been  trained  to  think,  to  question  every 
affirmation,  to  try  the  spirits  that  he  might 
know  their  worth.  Is  it  strange  that,  under 
this  discipline,  —  and  there  is  no  other  disci- 
pline that  is  intellectually  decent,  —  their  son 
should  come  forth  with  a  high  spirit,  a  vigor- 


152  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

ous  understanding,  and  a  somewhat  attenu- 
ated body  of  belief?  They  send  this  son  to 
the  divinity  school.  The  mood  of  the  age  is 
still  with  him.  In  the  modern  seminary  he 
stands  in  the  heart  of  the  great  debate  about 
the  Bible.  How  came  the  Old  Testament  to 
be  what  it  is  ?  How  came  the  New  Testament 
to  be  what  it  is  ?  How  much  is  authentic  his- 
tory ?  How  much,  if  any,  is  myth  or  legend 
or  the  accretion  of  the  creative  imagination 
of  after-times  ?  In  answer  to  these  questions 
their  son  hears  a  multitude  of  conflicting 
tongues,  and  Babel  itself  seems  peaceful  and 
beautiful  order  compared  with  this  unsilence- 
able  and  endless  uproar.  Again,  is  it  strange 
that  their  son,  when  he  presents  himself  for 
ordination  as  a  minister  of  Jesus  Christ, 
should  be  somewhat  uncertain,  and  perhaps 
unsatisfactory,  in  his  statement  of  faith  ? 
They  cannot  blame  him;  they  know  the 
honor  of  his  soul,  the  integrity  of  his  intel- 
lect, the  deep  and  tender  veneration  of  his 
heart  for  his  Master;  they  know  that  he 
stands  ready  to  confess  him  in  service  and  in 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    153 

sacrifice  and  unto  tears  and  blood.  They  can- 
not blame  him ;  why  should  they  blame  his 
teachers,  why  should  they  blame  any  one? 
The  mood  of  the  age  is  upon  us  all ;  whither 
shall  we  go  from  its  spirit,  or  whither  shall 
we  flee  from  its  presence?  If  we  take  the 
wings  of  the  morning  and  dwell  in  the  utter- 
most parts  of  the  sea,  even  there  shall  the 
mood  of  the  time  confront  us.  If  we  ascend 
up  into  heaven,  it  is  there;  if  we  make  our 
bed  in  hell,  it  is  there ;  it  is  with  us  in  the 
darkness  and  in  the  light ;  it  is  the  shadow 
of  God  in  the  mind  of  educated  man ;  as  the 
shadow  of  God  we  must  behold  it,  we  must 
implore  its  meaning,  we  must  beg  for  its 
name. 

The  profoundest  meaning  of  the  vast  and 
restless  mood  that  is  upon  us,  I  believe  to  be 
the  Divine  intention  to  throw  us  back  upon 
God,  the  Holy  Ghost.  If  natural  law  seems  to 
be  inviolable,  if  there  appears  to  be  no  longer 
any  room  left  for  miracle,  it  is  that  the  whole 
creation  may  appear  miraculous,  the  garment 
that  God  is  weaving  for  himself  on  the  roar- 


154  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

ing  looms  of  time,  under  the  eyes  of  the  liv- 
ing. For  a  few  miracles  hard  to  grasp,  we  are 
bidden  behold  a  miraculous  universe,  where 
all  things  depend  upon,  where  all  things  re- 
veal, the  mystery  of  the  Infinite  will.  No  man 
is  intellectually  justified  in  denying  the  pos- 
sibility of  the  miracles  of  Jesus;  he  does 
not  know  enough  to  deny.  No  man  has  a 
right  to  make  the  glory  of  Christianity  de- 
pend upon  the  miracle.  Does  the  Fourth 
Gospel  mean  nothing  in  setting  the  life  of 
Jesus  into  the  life  of  the  world,  and  back 
into  the  life  of  the  universe,  and  up  into  the 
life  of  the  Eternal  God,  without  the  aid  of 
miracle  ?  Consider  which  is  the  grander,  the 
story  of  the  incarnation  according  to  Luke,  or 
the  same  story  according  to  John. 

If  the  Bible  appears  to  be  no  longer  an 
infallible  book,  it  is  that  men  may  come  to 
know  the  Divine  inspirer  of  it.  The  Bible 
seems  to  me  to  have  gained  immeasurably  in 
the  process  of  scientific  examination.  The 
humanity  of  the  Bible  is  monumental;  and 
this  monumental  humanity  enables  us  to  lay 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    155 

hold  with  new  assurance  upon  the  Eternal 
humanity.  "  The  burdens  of  the  Bible  old  " 
are  still  out  of  the  Infinite.  In  the  lyric  and 
epic  utterance  of  supreme  souls  one  still  hears 
the  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  In  the  oracle 
of  the  prophet,  in  the  epistle  of  the  apostle, 
and  in  the  eternal  wisdom  and  tenderness  of 
the  teaching  of  Jesus,  we  still  rise  as  on  wings 
into  the  presence  of  the  Most  High.  Theories 
about  the  Bible  are  born  and  die  like  the 
swarms  of  insects  in  summer ;  but  the  Bible 
in  its  really  great  books  remains  what  it  has 
always  been  —  the  monumental  witness  to 
the  presence  in  man  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  If 
we  live  in  God,  we  shall  see  that  the  Bible 
lives  in  God;  if  God  lives  in  us,  we  shall 
know  that  God  lives  in  the  Bible. 

Even  the  uncertainty  about  the  person  of 
Jesus  Christ,  which  I  deplore,  seems  to  me  to 
be,  in  a  way,  providential.  "  It  is  expedient 
for  you  that  I  go  away  " ;  so  spoke  the  Lord. 
The  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  is,  after  all, 
the  religion  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  The  church 
is  the  church  of  the  risen  Lord  ;  the  church 


156  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

began  in  the  consciousness  of  the  risen  and 
reigning  Christ.  It  can  never  be,  without  out- 
rage upon  history,  without  revolt  from  Chris- 
tian reason,  the  church  of  the  dead  Christ. 
With  this  fountain  of  organized  Christianity 
sure,  with  this  consciousness  rising  and  termi- 
nating in  the  Lord  who  abolished  death,  we 
have  nothing  to  fear.  Behind  that,  below 
that,  sane  criticism  cannot  go.  And  with  this 
consciousness  as  channel,  there  comes  in  upon 
us,  if  we  will  but  open  the  gates,  the  floods 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  Holy  Spirit  thus  be- 
comes the  hope  of  the  church.  If  we  have  the 
Holy  Spirit,  he  will  guide  us  into  all  truth; 
he  will  recover  to  faith  and  life  the  truth 
that  the  church  may  from  time  to  time  lose. 
Thinking,  believing,  doing,  living  in  the 
strength  of  the  Holy  Ghost  —  there  is  no 
hope  save  in  that  experience;  and  for  the 
soul  and  for  the  church  in  that  experience, 
there  is  nothing  but  hope.  What  if  all  the 
criticism  and  uncertainty  of  the  age  shall 
prove  a  Divine  discipline  toward  this  issue? 
What  is  the  final  beatitude  for  man  but  that 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    157 

he  shall  live  and  move  and  have  his  being 
full  of  love  and  awe,  in  God?  For  what  do 
we  hope  when  we  pray  that  the  tabernacle  of 
God  may  be  with  men  ?  For  what  do  we  long 
when,  in  the  language  of  the  Apocalypse,  we 
behold  the  holy  city,  the  New  Jerusalem,  with 
no  temple  therein,  save  the  soul  of  God  om- 
nipresent and  omnipotent,  in  the  social  life 
of  the  race  ? 

The  outgoing  mariner  leaves  much  behind. 
The  dear  shores  fade  from  his  sight;  the 
beloved  land  sinks  deeper  and  deeper  under 
the  horizon ;  but  these  shores  and  that  land 
do  not  cease  to  be;  they  remain  part  of  the 
order  of  the  world,  and  the  buoyant  and 
benign  sea  goes  with  him,  floating  him  on 
its  joyous  floods,  and  fanning  him  with  its 
strong  winds,  till  he  anchors  in  the  harbor 
whither  he  is  bound.  The  recorded  gospel, 
the  recorded  Christ,  we  leave  behind  as  the 
swift  years  roll,  as  the  great  centuries  pass. 
That  Divine  life  in  Galilee  and  in  Judea 
is  far  away  from  our  time.  We  may  weep 
that  it  is  forever  receding  from  the  successive 


158  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

generations  of  men ;  but  we  must  not  forget 
that  it  is  part  of  the  history  of  the  race,  that 
it  is  the  abiding  and  the  supreme  human 
memorial,  and  the  glorious  deep  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  goes  forward  with  us ;  it  is  under  the 
keel  of  the  church.  Its  currents  are  all  toward 
good.  Its  winds  are  the  prevailing  forces 
in  all  progress ;  and  with  this  element  under 
us,  and  with  these  inspirations  behind  us,  fill- 
ing the  sails  of  faith,  and  blowing  into  white 
heat  the  great  furnaces  of  love,  we  have  every- 
thing to  hope  and  nothing  to  fear. 

The  secret  of  existence  for  the  individual 
Christian  and  for  the  whole  body  of  Christians 
is  in  a  life  in  the  life  of  God ;  in  a  life  that  can- 
not be  plucked  out  of  his  hand,  that  cannot  be 
torn  from  fellowship  with  him.  The  Christ  of 
yesterday  and  the  Christ  of  to-morrow  are  in 
the  keeping  of  the  Christ  of  to-day.  The  divine 
past  and  the  divine  future  are  safe,  utterly 
safe,  when  held  in  the  divine  present.  God 
is  our  refuge,  a  present  help  in  time  of  trouble. 
Therefore  will  not  we  fear,  though  the  earth 
be  removed  and  the  sea  roar  and  be  troubled. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    159 

The  planet  goes  forever  forward,  but  it  takes 
with  it  its  atmosphere,  and  when  the  storms 
are  still,  it  looks  through  that  atmosphere,  as 
through  a  vast  window,  upon  the  numberless 
shining  worlds  among  which  it  rolls.  Let  the 
moving  church  take  with  it  the  faith,  the 
experience,  the  protection,  the  infinite  gift  of 
the  Holy  Ghost.  Let  it  roll  forward  in  the 
heart  of  this  mystery  of  encasing  deity ;  let 
it  view  all  worlds  of  science  and  art  and  phi- 
losophy and  government,  all  the  shining  moods 
of  human  culture,  and  all  the  blasted  survivals 
of  departed  glory,  through  the  infinite  trans- 
parency and  peace  of  the  Eternal  Spirit. 

in 

If  now  we  raise  the  question,  How  are  we 
to  create  belief  in  Christ  and  his  gospel  to- 
day, I  know  of  no  better  approach  to  the 
final  answer  to  that  question  than  by  a  sym- 
pathetic study  of  Arnold's  poem,  "Rugby 
Chapel."  We  recall  at  once  the  vision  of  the 
dead  father  in  the  gloom  of  the  autumn  even- 
ing:— 


160  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

Coldly,  sadly  descends 

The  autumn  evening.  The  field 

Strewn  with  its  dank  yellow  drifts 

Of  wither'd  leaves,  and  the  elms, 

Fade  into  dimness  apace, 

Silent ;  —  hardly  a  shout 

From  a  few  boys  late  at  their  play ! 

The  lights  come  out  in  the  street, 

In  the  school-room  windows  ;  —  but  cold, 

Solemn,  unlighted,  austere, 

Through  the  gathering  darkness,  arise 

The  chapel-walls,  in  whose  bound 

Thou,  my  father !  art  laid. 

We  recall,  too,  the  poet's  recoil  from  the 
gloom  of  the  scene  as  he  thinks  of  the  radi- 
ant vigor  and  the  buoyant  cheerfulness  of  his 
father: — 

Such  thou  wast !  and  I  stand 

In  the  autumn  evening,  and  think 

Of  bygone  autumn  with  thee. 

Fifteen  years  have  gone  round 
Since  thou  arosest  to  tread, 
In  the  summer-morning,  the  road 
Of  death,  at  a  call  unforeseen, 
Sudden.  For  fifteen  years, 
We  who  till  then  in  thy  shade 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    161 

Rested  as  under  the  boughs 
Of  a  mighty  oak,  have  endured 
Sunshine  and  rain  as  we  might, 
Bare,  unshaded,  alone, 
Lacking  the  shelter  of  thee  ! 

From  this  vision  there  flows  faith  in  the 
persistence  of  that  soul,  faith  that  some- 
where,— 

Still  thou  performest  the  word 

Of  the  Spirit  in  whom  thou  dost  live  — 

Prompt,  unwearied,  as  here ! 

Then  the  poet  turns  to  consider  the  course  of 
the  life  of  mortal  men  on  the  earth.  There  is, 
first,  the  aimless,  unmeaning  life  that  lives  in 
vanity  and  dies  unregarded.  There  is,  second, 
the  life  of  the  valiant,  victorious  individualist 
who  breaks  away  from  his  companions,  leaves 
them  to  perish  in  the  storm,  and  who  alone 
comes  to  his  goal.  There  is,  third,  the  Chris- 
tian hero ;  let  us  listen  to  the  poet  again  :  — 

But  thou  wouldst  not  alone 
Be  saved,  my  father !  alone 
Conquer  and  come  to  thy  goal, 
Leaving  the  rest  in  the  wild. 


162  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

We  were  weary,  and  we 
Fearful,  and  we  in  our  march 
Fain  to  drop  down  and  to  die. 
Still  thou  turnedst,  and  still 
Beckonedst  the  trembler,  and  still 
Gavest  the  weary  thy  hand  ! 

If,  in  the  paths  of  the  world, 
Stones  might  have  wounded  thy  feet, 
Toil  or  dejection  have  tried 
Thy  spirit,  of  that  we  saw 
Nothing  —  to  us  thou  wast  still 
Cheerful,  and  helpful,  and  firm ! 
Therefore  to  thee  it  was  given 
Many  to  save  with  thyself ; 
And,  at  the  end  of  thy  day, 
O  faithful  shepherd !  to  come, 
Bringing  thy  sheep  in  thy  hand. 

Here  is  the  human  life  as  leader,  inspirer, 
saviour  of  other  human  lives;  here  is  the 
way  of  faith.  The  hero  whom  we  have 
known,  the  man  of  God,  the  lover  of  his 
kind,  the  helper  of  the  weak,  enables  us  to 
renew  the  vision  of  the  servants  of  God  and 
man  in  the  past,  enables  us,  through  all  the 
precious  memorials  of  their  lives,  to  behold 
and  believe  in  the  mighty  succession  of  the 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    163 

witnesses  for  the  Eternal,  lifts  us  to  the  con- 
sciousness of  Jesus  and  his  kingdom,  to  the 
consciousness  of  God  and  his  divine  regard 
for  man.  The  greatest  miracle  that  might  be 
wrought  would  appear  impotent  in  the  pre- 
sence of  the  living,  reasonable  witness  for  the 
things  of  the  spirit,  for  the  things  of  Christ, 
of  a  great  and  good  man.  What  we  need  to 
renew  our  faith  in  the  Highest  in  the  uni- 
verse, in  Jesus  the  highest  in  time,  is  not 
conversion  to  faith  in  the  miraculous,  but  the 
privilege  of  seeing  again  God  in  Christ  work- 
ing in  the  thought  and  feeling  and  action  of 
men  of  our  own  day.  The  contemporary  Chris- 
tian is  the  best  guide  to  the  historic  Master ; 
the  contemporary  communicant  of  the  Eternal 
is  the  highest  witness  for  the  reality  of  the 
reigning  Christ  and  his  kingdom  of  love. 
Arnold  was  spare  in  his  positive  beliefs,  but 
here  he  lays  in  clear  light  and  peace  the  way 
of  the  soul  to  the  richest  faith. 

And  through  thee  I  believe 

In  the  noble  and  great  who  are  gone ; 


164  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

Yes !  I  believe  that  there  lived 
Others  like  thee  in  the  past, 
Not  like  the  men  of  the  crowd 
Who  all  round  me  to-day 
Bluster  or  cringe,  and  make  life 
Hideous,  and  arid,  and  vile ; 
But  souls  temper'd  with  fire, 
Fervent,  heroic,  and  good, 
Helpers  and  friends  of  mankind. 

Ye  alight  in  our  van !  at  your  voice, 
Panic,  despair,  flee  away. 
Ye  move  through  the  ranks,  recall 
The  stragglers,  refresh  the  outworn, 
Praise,  re-inspire  the  brave ! 
Order,  courage,  return ; 
Eyes  rekindling,  and  prayers, 
Follow  your  steps  as  ye  go. 
Ye  fill  up  the  gaps  in  our  files, 
Strengthen  the  wavering  line, 
Stablish,  continue  our  march, 
On,  to  the  bound  of  the  waste, 
On,  to  the  City  of  God ! 

Two  great  principles  underlie  this  whole 
discussion  of  miracle  and  religion.  These  are 
the  scientific  conception  of  law  and  the  reli- 
gious conception  of  the  immanence  of  God 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND   MIRACLE     165 

in  the  cosmos  and  in  man.  The  scientific  con- 
ception of  law  as  a  generalization  from  a  wide 
induction  of  facts  was  presented  in  the  early 
part  of  this  discussion.  The  religious  concep- 
tion of  the  immanence  of  God  in  the  cosmos 
and  in  man  has  been  basal  in  our  consideration 
of  miracle  and  the  belief  in  God,  in  our  exam- 
ination of  miracle  in  relation  to  Jesus  and  his 
gospel,  and  in  our  remarks  upon  the  world  in 
which  religious  men  live  to-day.  The  imma- 
nence of  God  in  the  cosmos  and  in  man  does 
not  make  miracle  an  impossibility.  There  may 
be  more  than  one  version  of  the  active  will  of 
the  Most  High.  It  leaves  miracle  in  the  cate- 
gory of  the  logically  possible,  where  it  is  left 
by  the  scientific  conception  of  law.  But  just 
as  the  scientific  conception  of  law  tends  more 
and  more  to  reduce  miracle  to  a  bare  logical 
possibility,  so  the  religious  conception  of  the 
immanence  of  God  in  his  universe  tends  more 
and  more  to  make  miracle  superfluous.  Since 
God  is  in  every  mode  of  action  in  the  cosmos 
and  in  man  ;  since  even  now  he  is  closer  than 
breathing,  nearer  than  hands  or  feet;  since 


166  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

his  intelligent  will  is  the  ground  of  the  cosmos 
and  all  its  phases;  since  his  conscience  is  in 
the  conscience  of  man,  what  room  is  there 
for  miracle,  or  what  need?  Miracle  is  the 
natural  sequence  of  the  transcendental  con- 
ception of  God.  The  transcendent  God  makes 
the  cosmos  and  man,  fits  them  up  with 
power  so  that  they  run  of  themselves ;  he  is 
not  in  them,  he  is  a  God  living  beyond  them. 
They  have  no  immediate  value  for  the  soul 
that  would  find  God,  they  have  only  a  repre- 
sentative value,  and  as  they  are  degenerate, 
that  representative  value  is  sadly  impaired.  If 
God  is  to  be  known  at  first-hand,  according 
to  this  idea,  it  must  be  through  miracle.  Thus 
Jesus  must  come  into  the  world  in  a  miraculous 
way;  thus  his  career  as  teacher,  doer,  and 
sufferer  must  be  embedded  in  miracle.  The 
natural  order  in  the  cosmos  and  in  man  is  an 
order  devoid  of  God;"  the  return  of  God  and 
his  immediate  presentation  to  man  is  not  and 
cannot  be  without  miracle.  In  a  word,  this  I 
understand  to  be  the  philosophy  that  makes 
miracle  a  necessity  of  faith.    Now  that  the 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    167 

philosophy  is  no  longer  recognized  as  true, 
the  inference  as  to  the  need  of  miracle  is  no 
longer  seen  to  be  valid. 

I  have  conducted  my  discussion  in  accom- 
modation to  the  fears  of  many  good  men  whom 
I  deeply  respect.  I  have  been  concerned  to 
show  that  the  Christian  religion  is  essentially 
independent  of  miracle.  In  this  attempt  I 
have  taken  the  ground  assigned  by  the 
thinkers  who  do  not  believe  in  miracle.  So 
far  as  need  be,  I  have  indicated  my  own  posi- 
tion. While  I  hold  the  scientific  conception 
of  law  and  the  religious  conception  of  the 
immanence  of  God  in  his  universe,  I  do  not 
admit  that  these  ideas  render  miracle  an  im- 
possibility. They  leave  it  in  the  category  of 
the  logically  possible,  with  the  further  impres- 
sion that  it  is  naturally  and  religiously  im- 
probable. I  am  still  further  free  to  confess 
that  miracle  is  no  part  of  my  working  philoso- 
phy of  life,  not  because  I  deny  its  reality,  but 
because  I  cannot  be  sure  of  its  reality,  and 
I  wish  to  live  as  far  as  possible  among  the 
things  that  are  sure,  and  among  the  things 


168  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

about  which  sureness  is  a  reasonable  hope. 
That  I  may  see  for  myself,  that  I  may  help 
others  to  see,  that  religion  is  independent 
of  miracle,  I  accept  in  a  provisional  way  the 
denial  of  miracle  as  the  basis  of  debate.  Mir- 
acle is  myth;  so  it  is  said  by  a  multitude 
of  scholars  and  thinkers;  and  we  allow  this 
contention  to  stand.  These  thinkers  assert 
that  natural  law  rules  over  all ;  and  we  accept 
the  assertion  as  true.  On  this  ground  it  has 
been  shown  that  mechanism  is  the  vehicle 
of  Spirit;  the  world  as  natural  law  carries 
within  it  the  Eternal  God.  The  flying  wheels 
of  being  have  their  motion  and  life  in  him ;  it 
is  still  true  that  he  makes  the  outgoings  of 
the  morning  and  the  evening  to  rejoice;  it 
is  still  true  that  seed-time  and  harvest,  sum- 
mer and  winter,  are  from  him.  The  order  of 
life  and  death  is  the  expression  of  his  Will ; 
unalterable  as  that  order  is,  it  cannot  keep 
God  from  the  soul,  or  the  soul  from  God. 
Within  the  iron  circle  of  natural  law  it  is  pos- 
sible to-day,  as  it  was  three  thousand  years 
ago,  to  sing :  — 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    169 

The  Lord  is  my  shepherd ;  I  shall  not  want. 

He  rnaketh  me  to  lie  down  in  green  pastures : 

He  leadeth  me  beside  the  still  waters. 

He  restoreth  my  soul : 

He  guideth  me  in  the  paths  of  righteousness  for 

his  name's  sake. 
Yea,   though   I  walk   through  the  valley  of  the 

shadow  of  death, 
I  will  fear  no  evil ;  for  thou  art  with  me  : 
Thy  rod  and  thy  staff,  they  comfort  me. 

This  is  the  triumphant  insight  of  the  reli- 
gious soul.  The  parable  is  the  natural  life  of 
the  sheep  and  the  shepherd.  The  spiritual 
experience  behind  the  parable  is  man  in  the 
natural  order  of  the  world  guided,  tended, 
comforted,  and  kept  by  the  Eternal  lover  and 
possessor  of  man's  soul.  In  this  parable  of 
the  possibilities  of  the  soul  under  the  natural 
order,  alive  and  aflame  with  God  as  it  is,  the 
whole  higher  spirit  of  the  Old  Testament  sur- 
vives as  an  abiding  and  precious  possession. 

If  it  be  doubted  whether  this  can  be  true 
of  the  New  Testament,  let  those  who  doubt 
stand  again  under  the  cross.  Let  them  look 


170  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

upon  the  Supreme  sufferer,  oblivious  of  his 
own  agony,  going  forth  to  the  penitent  thief 
in  the  great  assurance  :  "  Verily  I  say  unto 
thee,  To-day  shalt  thou  be  with  me  in  Para- 
dise." Let  them  look  again  and  behold  him 
going  forth  in  the  fullness  of  pity  to  the  bru- 
tal men  who  nail  him  to  the  cross :  "  Father, 
forgive  them ;  for  they  know  not  what  they 
do."  Let  them  look  still  again,  and  this  time 
let  them  watch  his  spirit,  still  regardless  of 
its  own  woe,  entering  the  heart  of  his  suf- 
fering mother,  whom  he  thus  intrusts  to  the 
care  of  the  disciple  whom  he  loved:  "  Woman, 
behold,  thy  son  !  Son,  behold,  thy  mother ! " 
Let  them  listen  with  bowed  head  and  in  pro- 
f oundest  awe  to  the  final  words :  "  It  is 
finished."  "Father,  into  thy  hands  I  com- 
mend my  spirit."  Here  is  the  process  of  natural 
law  at  its  blackest ;  here  is  the  reign  of  mech- 
anism as  a  reign  of  terror;  and  yet,  in  all 
history,  is  there  any  disclosure  of  the  Eternal 
love  and  pity  so  clear,  so  dear,  so  great  as 
this? 

When  the  night  of  death  is  past ;  when  the 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AND  MIRACLE    171 

true  light  of  Christian  discipleship  is  once 
more  shining ;  when  the  scattered  and  appalled 
apostles  are  recalled  and  reassured ;  when  in 
their  lives  the  promise  is  fulfilled,  "  I  will  not 
leave  you  comfortless,  I  will  come  to  you"; 
when  in  the  depth  and  wonder  of  their  ex- 
perience and  in  the  might  of  their  service  the 
words  unfold  their  truth :  "  Lo,  I  am  with 
you  alway,  even  to  the  end  of  the  world," 
we  see  again  through  the  natural  order  the 
sovereign  soul  of  the  risen  Lord.  In  life  and 
in  death  the  Lord  is  with  us ;  in  life  and  in 
death  we  are  the  Lord's,  and  the  gospel 
that  we  still  preach  is  the  old  eternal  gospel, 
Immanuel,  God  in  the  world  and  the  world 
in  God. 


CHAPTER  V 

AN   ETERNAL   GOSPEL 


OUR  age  has  been  concerned  to  an  amaz- 
ing extent  with  the  local  and  temporal 
side  of  religion.  Religion  is  an  historic  phe- 
nomenon; as  such  it  has  expressed  itself  in 
institutions,  rites,  beliefs,  literature.  This  ex- 
pression of  religion  may  be  called  its  tempo- 
ral side;  its  institutions  belong  among  the 
social  forms  of  human  life,  its  rites  are  a  part 
of  the  general  custom  of  the  world,  its  beliefs 
are  a  phase  of  the  philosophy  of  existence  and 
the  universe,  its  books  have  their  place  in  the 
literature  of  the  race.  To  this  temporal  aspect 
of  religious  faith  probably  more  scientific  at- 
tention has  been  devoted  during  the  last  fifty 
years  than  in  any  similar  period  in  the  history 
of  mankind.  The  scientific  scholar  has  ap- 
peared, and  his  special  concern  has  been  with 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  173 

the  literature  of  religion,  its  texts,  documents, 
compositions,  and  with  the  history  of  these 
and  the  ideas  embodied  in  them.  The  method 
of  this  investigation  has  been  that  common  to 
all  men  of  modern  education,  first-hand  ascer- 
tainment of  fact,  and  inference  in  accord  with 
the  fact.  The  presupposition  underlying  the 
scholar's  work  and  giving  general  character 
to  it  has  been  a  naturalistic  conception  of  the 
cosmos. 

What,  now,  is  the  justification  for  the  sub- 
jection of  the  temporal  side  of  religion  to  this 
new  and  searching  examination  ?  In  reply  it 
may  be  said  that  there  are  two  justifications, 
one  scientific,  and  the  other  religious.  The 
scientific  desire  to  know  the  truth,  the  whole 
truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth,  is  of  itself 
a  sufficient  reason  for  the  investigation.  The 
scholar's  work  is  here  seen  to  be  part  of  the 
scientific  activity  of  the  world  ;  it  has  behind 
it  the  impulse  of  all  true  science,  love  of  truth 
and  the  quenchless  desire  to  know  it.  Whether 
that  truth  shall  be  favorable  to  human  interests 
or  not,  does  not  here  enter  into  the  question. 


174  RELIGION   AND  MIRACLE 

What  are  the  facts,  and  what  do  they  mean 
in  the  historic  process?  For  the  scientific  in- 
tellect these  are  the  main  questions,  and  in 
the  attempt  to  meet  them  an  amazing  world 
of  activity  has  been  called  into  being. 

In  addition  to  this  scientific  consideration 
there  is  another.  There  is  the  religious  belief 
that  things  eternal  are  seen  through  things 
temporal,  that  space  and  time  in  all  their  rich 
variety,  color,  and  movement  are  servants  of 
the  Highest.  This  belief  leads  to  the  expec- 
tation that  a  correct  version  of  the  temporal, 
in  respect  to  any  religion,  would  prepare  the 
way  for  a  new  and  a  more  influential  concep- 
tion of  the  Eternal.  Here  is  a  new  fountain 
of  enthusiasm  for  the  devout  scholar.  In  his 
textual  criticism,  his  analysis  and  rearrange- 
ment of  documents,  his  assignment  of  books 
to  their  proper  place  in  the  process  of  human 
development,  he  is  preparing  the  way  for  a 
closer  vision  of  the  coming  of  the  kingdom 
of  God.  It  is  the  hope  of  serving  this  ulti- 
mate end  that  turns  the  detail  and  drudgery 
of   his   work   into  poetry ;   that   end  shines 


AN   ETERNAL  GOSPEL  175 

through  the  entire  world  in  which  he  works, 
—  a  world  of  confusion,  sorrow,  and  contra- 
diction, —  and  that,  like  the  sun,  fills  it  with 
splendor  and  life. 

While  all  this  is  true,  it  must  be  added 
that  little  has  been  done  in  our  age  toward 
the  profounder  vision  of  the  Eternal  in  reli- 
gion. It  is  humiliating  that  here  we  can  do 
no  more  than  prepare  the  way  of  the  Lord ; 
that  we  are  fit  for  criticism,  but  not  for  in- 
sight, able  to  consider  in  scientific  order  what 
others  have  created,  but  unable  to  bring  forth 
ourselves ;  that  we  are  greater  than  the  men 
of  old  in  research,  but  immeasurably  beneath 
them  in  the  richness  and  reality  of  religion. 
The  role  of  the  prophet  in  the  cleft  of  the 
rock,  witnessing,  so  far  as  mortal  man  may, 
the  pageant  of  the  Eternal  goodness,  is  not 
for  us ;  we  are  content  to  investigate  the  tra- 
dition of  this  high  experience,  to  call  atten- 
tion to  the  cleft  in  the  rock  and  the  rubbish- 
heap  at  either  end.  Religion  as  a  life  and  as 
a  literature  has  its  greatest  exemplars  and 
masterpieces  in  the  past ;  to-day  the  soul  is 


176  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

not  alive  as  it  has  been,  and  too  often  the 
creative  spirit  is  lost  in  a  world  of  confused 
detail. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  in  great  re- 
ligions the  human  spirit  is  creative  in  all  the 
spheres  of  life,  in  thought,  in  feeling,  and  in 
character.  Religion  is  primarily  an  affair  of 
being,  exalted  and  greatened  being,  with  the 
pulse  of  creative  power  beating  at  its  heart. 
As  in  some  great  mountain  one  notes  a  unique 
relation  to  the  infinite  sky  and  a  capacity  out 
of  that  sky  to  renew  its  splendor,  so  in  a 
soul  sublime  in  its  religious  consciousness  we 
observe  a  sovereign  sense  of  the  Eternal  and 
an  unmeasured  capacity  to  re-create  life,  on  a 
nobler  plan  and  on  a  vaster  scale,  from  the 
Eternal.  "  There  is  a  spirit  in  man,  and  the 
breath  of  the  Almighty  giveth  them  under- 
standing." Man's  nature  as  a  religious  being 
would  seem  to  be  a  system  of  capacities  in 
the  favoring  presence  of  the  Eternal;  capa- 
cities for  mistake,  suffering,  entanglement  in 
the  tragedy  of  time ;  capacities  for  escape, 
reconciliation  with  the  moral  ideal,  achieve- 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  177 

ment,  growth,  and  hope ;  and  religion  at  its 
best  is  the  victorious  consciousness  of  this 
order  of  capacities  in  man  as  man  lives  in 
God.  It  is  this  great  soul  of  religion  that  is 
in  danger  to-day,  the  movement  of  the  spirit 
of  man  in  the  Eternal,  the  movement  of  the 
Eternal  in  the  spirit  of  man. 

Much  in  the  custom  of  religion  tends  to  ] 
deaden  men  to  its  essential  spirit.  The  monu-  ^ 
mental  expressions  of  religion  in  other  ages 
become  substitutes  for  present  vision,  passion, 
and  character ;  the  Bible  that  should  edu- 
cate, inspire,  set  free  in  original  relations  to 
God  absolves  the  soul  from  experimentation, 
insight,  and  discovery.  We  repeat  the  prayers 
of  the  saints,  but  we  do  not  covet  their  crea- 
tive heart;  we  adopt  liturgies  because  they 
lessen  the  burden  of  the  ministers  of  the  gos- 
pel, and  we  fail  to  see  that  in  so  doing  we 
rob  them  of  their  highest  privilege.  How 
the  world  looks  from  the  mountain-tops  of 
genuine,  ardent  prayer,  they  know  who  have 
been  there;  we  encourage  our  preachers  to 
dispense  with  this  toil  and  the  supreme  ex- 


178  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

perience  to  which  it  leads,  and  to  adopt  and 
repeat  the  reports  of  other  men's  experience. 
We  build  creeds  to  aid  faith,  and  thereby  deny 
to  faith  the  infinite  and  intellectual  freedom 
and  hope  there.  We  enrich  our  service  with 
ritual  and  ceremony  till  in  the  pomp  and  cir- 
cumstance of  worship  the  God  who  is  spirit 
and  truth  is  forgotten.  We  lament  the  loss  of 
belief  in  angels  and  seek  to  revive  the  doctrine 
of  familiar  spirits ;  we  speak  of  the  pathos  of 
these  vanished  worlds  of  faith,  and  do  not  per- 
ceive the  gain  to  man  and  the  grandeur  of  this 
abolition  of  all  intermediaries.  To-day  man 
leans  upon  the  Eternal  strength;  to-day  he 
stands  face  to  face  with  God,  and  this  issue  to 
which  the  Holy  One  is  leading  us  we  confuse 
with  the  custom  of  religion  in  our  poor  hands. 
Even  the  legitimate  and  essential  labors  of 
the  scholar  are  apt  to  become  an  impediment. 
His  vocation  is  research  into  fact,  and  while 
it  is  true  that  every  fact  has  its  ideal  side, 
like  the  eagle's  egg  in  the  nest,  only  awaiting 
the  brooding  intellect  to  become  a  living 
thought,  yet  the  vocation  of  the  scholar  in 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  179 

our  time,  especially  in  the  sphere  of  religion, 
is  not  quick  to  kindle  the  brooding  mind. 
Learning  and  insight  should  go  together,  but 
they  frequently  part  company.  Never  in  the 
history  of  religion  has  this  separation  been 
more  painfully  frequent  than  now.  The  ways 
of  the  Spirit  of  God  with  the  spirit  of  man 
are  not  in  the  vision  of  many  who  yet  write 
learned  books  whose  whole  value  depends  on 
the  previous  question.  The  earth  and  the 
soul  have  their  orbits ;  poor  is  the  geologist 
who  forgets  the  wide  and  wild  path  on  which 
his  planet  runs,  and  poor  is  the  scholar  who 
becomes  oblivious  of  man's  inherent  and  inces- 
sant relation  to  the  Eternal.  The  frivolous 
custom  of  religion  is  aided  by  the  scholar  as 
he  falls  a  victim  to  detail,  as  he  fails  to  con- 
ceive history  in  terms  of  the  ideal  that  strug- 
gles within  it,  a  living  but  imprisoned  force, 
as  he  forgets  to  think  of  religion  in  time  sub 
specie  aeternitatis. 

It  has  been  said  that  modern  religion  is 
an  imitation  and  an  echo.  In  science,  in  lit- 
erature, in  music,  in  political  and  industrial 


t/ 


180  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

organization  the  modern  man  of  the  West 
is  original ;  in  religion  he  is  not  original.  I 
think  the  modern  man  is  superficial  and  imita- 
tive here  because  his  faith  has  become  formal 
and  trivial.  The  work  of  the  scholar  in  the 
history  of  religion  should  be  of  the  greatest 
consequence ;  we  have  seen  why  it  so  often 
falls  below  its  possibility.  The  formal  and 
closed  nature  of  religion,  as  we  conceive  it,  is 
another  aspect  of  the  same  distress.  The  mod- 
ern man  is  not  doing  himself  justice  in  this 
supreme  sphere.  He  is  here  a  poor  tradition- 
alist, a  pale  Protestant,  a  literal  Christian 
minus  the  central  idea  of  the  Christian  faith, 
the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  adoption 
into  intellect  and  life  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  would  bring  back  into  faith  cre- 
ative power,  and  the  modern  mind,  free  and 
great  in  so  many  spheres  of  human  interest, 
would  appear  in  the  sphere  of  religion  in  an- 
swering greatness. 

An  immense  amount  of  good  work  is  done 
by  all  branches  of  the  Christian  church.  Edu- 
cation, public  service,  works  of  mercy,  all  the 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  181 

higher  interests  of  the  nation,  have  in  the 
Christian  churches  their  best  friends.  The 
strongest  defenders  of  humanity  and  the 
mightiest  foes  of  inhumanity  are  in  these 
churches.  Practical  idealism  burns  there  with 
a  steady  and  powerful  light;  Christian  vi- 
sions for  society  and  Christian  pity  and  hope 
abound.  Yet  it  must  be  said  that  these  pre- 
cious things  are  confined  to  the  few.  The 
effective  force  in  the  churches  is  still  a  Gid- 
eon's army,  a  resolute  but  meagre  remnant  of 
the  total  enrolled  membership.  The  cry  for 
a  revival  of  religion  is  natural ;  but  the  reli- 
gion to  be  revived  is  not  the  right  kind,  nor 
is  the  revival  sought  of  sufficient  depth.  The 
pervasion  of  man's  whole  being  by  the  Eternal 
is  what  we  need ;  minds  renewed  in  the  image 
of  the  Perfect  mind,  hearts  under  the  perpet- 
ual spell  of  the  things  that  are  excellent,  wills 
steady,  and  sure  in  the  service  of  the  Chris- 
tian end  of  existence,  God's  kingdom  and 
righteousness  ;  these  are  our  needs.  The  pop- 
ular mind  is  debased  by  the  evil  custom  of 
the  world;  the  popular  heart  is  wanting  in 


182  RELIGION  AND   MIRACLE 

reverence,  and  in  the  morality  that  reverence 
alone  can  create  and  sustain ;  the  popular  will 
is  without  character ;  society  as  it  lies  open 
before  us  cries  out  for  a  revival  of  religion, 
but  the  religion  needed  is  not  the  form  of 
sound  words,  or  the  pious  devices  and  subter- 
fuges of  professional  revivalism,  but  man's 
soul  made  alive  in  the  enduring  sense  of  the 
living  and  Eternal  God.  For  this  end  profes- 
sional revivalism  with  its  organizations,  its 
staff  of  reporters  who  make  the  figures  suit 
the  hopes  of  good  men,  the  system  of  adver- 
tisements, and  the  exclusion  or  suppression 
of  all  sound  critical  comment,  the  appeals  to 
emotion  and  the  use  of  means  which  have  no 
visible  connection  with  grace,  and  cannot  by 
any  possibility  lead  to  glory,  is  utterly  inade- 
quate. The  world  awaits  the  vision,  the  pas- 
sion, the  simplicity,  and  the  stern  truthfulness 
of  the  Hebrew  prophet ;  it  awaits  the  imperial 
breadth  and  moral  energy  of  the  Christian 
apostle  to  the  nations ;  it  awaits  the  teacher 
who,  like  Christ,  shall  carry  his  doctrine  in 
a  great  mind  and  in  a  great  character. 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  183 

I  have  spoken  of  the  few  elect  souls,  men 
and  women,  in  our  churches  who  are  worthy 
to  stand  among  the  best  of  the  Christian 
ages.  What  about  the  mass  of  church  people  ? 
Are  they  not  as  fond  of  the  polluted  book, 
the  play  with  its  appeal  to  sensual  passion,  as 
their  pagan  neighbors  ?  Who  hears  of  their 
refusing  to  buy  a  cheap  and  repulsive  sheet 
that  costs  a  penny,  that  they  may  give  sup- 
port to  a  great  but  two-penny  paper?  Who 
ever  heard  them  object  to  the  poor  dancing- 
girl  on  the  stage,  dancing  her  soul  away 
to  please  low  tastes?  Who  can  report  any 
revolt  on  their  part  over  the  shame  of  the  city 
and  the  tradition  of  infamy  that  carries  on  its 
black  tide  thousands  of  youths  to  the  pit? 
Do  they  not  know  every  cheap  and  question- 
able book,  every  slimy  play,  every  audacious 
device  of  the  person  who  caters  for  pagans, 
every  social  function  far  removed  from  sanc- 
tity, every  avenue  of  exclusiveness  and  pride, 
every  black  art  of  gossip,  every  twist  and  turn 
of  the  ropes  of  inhumanity,  and  do  they  not 
attend  church  and  look  for  the  coming  of  the 


184  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

kingdom  of  God  ?  What  kind  of  revival  will 
meet  this  case  ?  Hysteria  will  not  do,  nor  the 
devoutness  of  Lent,  nor  a  turn  at  psychic 
healing,  whether  as  patient  or  patron.  What 
is  demanded  here  is  the  axe  laid  at  the  root 
of  the  tree;  the  new  heaven  and  the  new 
earth,  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness;  the 
renunciation  of  the  devil  and  all  his  works, 
and  the  profound  and  sincere  appeal  to  the 
Eternal  God. 

There  are  the  professional  architects  of 
unity,  and  what  a  sad  battalion  they  are ! 
They  seek  to  unify,  in  this  sect  or  that,  all 
the  rival  sects;  they  devise,  cloud  the  issue, 
and  sugar-coat  the  pill,  hoping  by  diplomacy  to 
make  sure  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  love. 
The  unity  that  each  sect  seeks  is  the  unity  of 
the  lamb  inside  the  lion  ;  and  this  is  not  the 
most  pitiable  aspect  of  the  subject.  The  bases 
of  unity  are  the  supreme  disgrace.  They  are 
the  acknowledgment  of  this  or  that  ancient 
creed  which  has  become,  in  part  at  least, 
questionable,  perhaps  incredible;  the  accept- 
ance of  this  or  that  ecclesiastical  usage  which 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  185 

any  congregation  of  rogues  might  agree  to ; 
submission  to  some  external  authority,  papal 
or  episcopal,  and  the  meek  reception  at  their 
poor  hands  of  one's  birthright  as  a  free  child 
of  God.  Religion,  the  only  thing  worth 
uniting  for,  religion,  a  man's  share,  his  grow- 
ing share  in  the  life  of  the  Eternal,  is  seldom 
alluded  to ;  it  is  taken  for  granted,  much  in 
the  same  way  as  a  bankrupt  person  might 
assume  that  he  was  a  millionaire.  Never  since 
God's  world  of  men  began  to  run  have  ec- 
clesiastics gathered  men  into  unity ;  what  they 
have  done  has  been  to  make  the  spiritual 
prison  larger  and  pack  it  with  a  greater  multi- 
tude. Never  till  the  day  of  doom  will  true 
unity  come  except  by  the  prophet  of  the 
Eternal  beseeching  all  disciples  of  Jesus  to 
retreat  from  their  untenable  assumptions,  their 
foolish  presumptions,  their  snobbery  and 
quackery,  their  worldliness  and  inhumanity, 
back  upon  the  life  of  God.  Never  till  religion 
shall  become  profound  and  mighty,  never  till 
it  shall  become  our  chief  joy,  shall  we  unite 
in   larger   and   larger   groups ;  never   while 


186  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

eccentricity  is  our  chief  gospel,  pretense  our 
chief  delight,  and  worldliness  our  main  pur- 
suit, shall  we  be  unified  on  any  other  ground 
than  falsehood,  or  with  any  other  sect  than 
that  of  fools. 

In  the  presence  of  infinitely  deeper  con- 
cerns, how  slight  appears  to  be  our  concern 
with  miracle.  When  our  anxiety  is  about  the 
interior  life  and  majesty  of  religion,  we  shall 
not  trouble  ourselves  over  the  record  of  signs 
and  wonders  in  which  history  discovers  it. 
The  enchantments  of  sense  are  not  to  be  com- 
pared with  the  achievements  of  the  soul  of 
man  as  it  lives  in  God.  Outward  things  are 
shallow,  one  and  all,  till  they  become  inward 
things;  thought  alone  discovers  depth  and 
permanence.  Science  itself  is  shallow  till  it 
gives  us,  as  in  physics,  a  transformed  cosmos, 
—  a  cosmos  taken  from  the  senses  and  given 
back,  a  less  garish  but  an  infinitely  greater 
wonder,  through  the  understanding.  The  re- 
ligion of  miracle,  it  must  be  confessed,  is  out- 
ward and  shallow;  religion  becomes  great 
only  as  it  becomes  an  affair  of  the  soul,  con- 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  187 

ceived  and  brought  forth  in  the  strength  of 
the  Eternal.  The  central  debates,  difficulties, 
interests,  and  hopes  of  religion  are  elsewhere 
than  in  miracle,  and  to  a  few  of  the  more 
important  of  these  I  must  now  call  attention 
in  order  and  explicitness. 

n 

The  teacher  of  religion  has  on  hand  a  real 
and  not  a  mere  academic  contest.  He  is  called 
not  to  undertake  the  defense  of  any  historic 
system  of  theology  such  as  that  of  Augustine, 
Calvin,  or  Edwards ;  nor  is  it  the  preacher's 
business  to  protest  against  the  attested  results 
of  modern  Biblical  scholarship ;  nor  is  it  his 
vocation  to  fight  science  on  its  own  ground 
and  in  the  service  of  its  legitimate  ends  ;  nor 
to  give  an  unwarrantable  significance  to  the 
debate  over  miracle ;  it  is  his  far  greater  task 
to  meet  current  philosophic  denials  of  his  gos- 
pel, to  do  battle  against  the  tremendous  vital 
contradictions  of  his  message,  to  deal  with  the 
fanaticism  that  turns  sanity  in  faith  out  of 
doors,  and  to  take  into  account  the  woes  that 


188  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

afflict  organized  Christianity  to-day.  Here  are 
living  foes,  all  the  more  formidable  because 
sincere  and  sustained  by  reputable  and  sin- 
cere men.  A  rapid  glance  at  the  sad  heart  of 
our  time,  in  its  philosophic,  vital,  fanatical, 
and  ecclesiastical  contradictions  of  an  eternal 
gospel,  is  now  in  order. 

To-day  the  battle  is  raging  round  three 
distinct  and  opposite  views  of  our  human 
world.  These  views  come  mailed  and  pan- 
oplied in  august  philosophic  idiom  and  tech- 
nique; they  are  known  as  Pure  Phenome- 
nalism, Abstract  or  Transcendental  Idealism, 
and  Concrete  Idealism,  formidable  names  that 
cover  ideas  that  are  simple  and  easy  of  ap- 
prehension when  translated  into  common 
language. 

The  first  view,  that  of  Pure  Phenomenalism, 
regards  our  human  world  as  a  vagrant;  it 
wanders  lonely  as  a  cloud  with  hardly  a  patch 
of  light  upon  its  back  or  a  sunbeam  thrust 
against  its  poor  old  ribs ;  it  is  detached,  iso- 
lated, a  dream,  a  delusion.  The  old  empiri- 
cism issued  in  this  conclusion  inevitably,  the 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  189 

empiricism  of  Spencer,  the  Mills,  Bentham, 
and  the  great  perf  ecter  of  the  old  empiricism, 
David  Hume.  The  new  empirical  idealism,  an 
idealism  of  sentiment  and  imagination  such  as 
that  set  forth  with  so  much  charm  of  manner 
by  Professor  George  Santayana,1  arrives  at 
the  same  goal.  While  built  upon  the  crudest 
materialistic  foundation,  this  philosophy  of 
the  literary  man  absolves  our  human  world 
from  all  connection  with  permanence.  That 
world  exists  for  men  ;  and  beyond  men  it  has 
no  meaning.  Science,  Art,  and  Religion  are 
but  the  several  phases  of  man's  life  ;  infinite 
mystery  is  beneath  and  above  and  round  about 
our  world ;  what  it  is  for  that  Infinite,  while 
logically  beyond  all  computation,  practically 
amounts  to  nothing.  Here  is  a  form  of  ideal- 
ism that,  while  it  labors  in  its  own  sentimental 
way  to  keep  and  to  enjoy  the  world  of  human 
values,  yet  frankly  confesses,  now  with  pathos 
and  again  with  disdain,  that  the  world  of  man 
is  fugitive  and  worthless.  This  form  of  ideal- 
ism has   not  thus  far  been   expressed  with 

1  In  his  interesting  book,  The  Life  of  Reason. 


190  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

strength  and  thoroughness  enough  to  make  it 
formidable ;  but  as  it  stands  in  current  litera- 
ture, it  leads  toward  serious  issues.  It  takes 
no  uncommon  insight  to  see  how  strong  this 
foe  of  the  worth  of  man's  world  might  be- 
come. It  involves  belief  in  the  primacy  and 
the  sovereignty  of  the  material  basis  of  exist- 
ence ;  and  of  course  belief  in  the  incidental 
and  evanescent  character  of  the  world  of 
mind.  It  is  a  form  of  thought  at  variance 
with  faith  in  the  dignity  of  man  and  the  pre- 
sence in  man  of  the  Universal  spirit.  It  is 
alien  to  the  Christian  philosophy  of  existence ; 
all  the  more  must  it  be  watched  because  it 
recognizes  sincerely  an  ideal  humanity  in  the 
heart  of  the  cosmos  whose  worth  for  the  uni- 
verse is  nevertheless  nothing.  It  is  the  pret- 
tiest, daintiest,  and  in  its  implications  the 
deadliest,  current  form  of  materialism. 

The  second  view,  that  of  abstract  and 
transcendental  Idealism,  has  its  strongest  ex- 
pression in  Bradley's  great  book,  "Appear- 
ance and  Keality."  This  book  is,  however^ 
only  one  of  many  attempts  to  find  the  uni- 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  191 

verse  through  man ;  attempts  which  find  no 
consistent  or  permanent  meaning  in  man's 
world.  Here  Bradley  is  but  a  nineteenth  cen- 
tury Spinoza ;  his  book  is  a  new  version  of  an 
old  philosophic  tradition.  We  have  nothing 
here  to  do  with  the  process  by  which  he  and 
his  followers  attain  their  goal ;  we  take  the 
result  to  which  they  come,  and  we  protest 
against  it  in  the  name  of  our  human  world. 
When  we  hear  that  world  described  as  an" 
appearance  of  some  grand  abysmal  reality,  a 
messenger  from  some  inaccessible,  inscrutable, 
eternal  sphinx,  a  bubble  blown  by  something, 
no  one  knows  what,  floating  in  the  path  of 
time,  gay,  gorgeous,  yet  doomed  to  swift  col- 
lapse, and  when  the  collapse  comes,  leaving 
no  trace  of  itself  and  its  values  anywhere,  we 
protest.  Our  human  world  is  our  surest,  as  it 
is  our  most  precious,  possession  ;  and  we  can- 
not consent  to  the  legitimacy  of  the  process 
by  which  it  is  sublimated  out  of  being  into 
a  form  of  existence  that  remains,  and  must 
forever  remain  to  the  unsophisticated  intellect, 
a  blank.  Against  the  pure  phenomenon  and 


192  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

the  transcendental  reality,  against  the  world 
as  a  vagrant  and  the  Absolute  as  a  man-eater, 
genuine  religion  must  always  protest ;  and  in 
these  two  current  philosophic  traditions,  the 
Christian  religion  as  the  religion  of  the  infi- 
nite worth  of  human  beings  must  recognize 
the  contradiction  of  its  essential  gospel.  Nat- 
uralism is  no  foe  to  Christianity  unless  it  is 
naturalism  minus  the  presence  of  an  ideal. 
The  life  of  Christianity  is  in  the  ideal,  and 
the  realization  of  the  ideal  may  well  be  exclu- 
sively in  and  through  the  natural  order.  Ideal- 
ism is  the  friend  of  Christianity  unless  it 
becomes  idealism  minus  the  essential  worth 
of  man.  Humanism  is  the  profound  friend  of 
the  gospel  of  Jesus  unless  it  denies  itself,  cuts 
itself  off  from  the  Infinite,  and  sees  the  world 
of  man  as  an  unattached  and  incidental  phe- 
nomenon in  the  heart  of  a  cosmos  inferior  to 
itself. 

The  current  movements  in  philosophy  meet 
in  one  sad  confession,  the  loss  of  faith  in  the 
permanent  worth  of  man's  world.  Naturalism 
when  it  excludes  the  ideal  and  when  it  makes 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  193 

the  ideal  dependent  upon  the  process  of 
nature ;  idealism  when  it  seeks  reality  beyond 
the  order  of  human  existence;  humanism  when 
it  fails  to  see  any  organic  relation  between  man 
and  the  Eternal,  chant  the  same  dirge  as  to- 
gether they  dig  the  grave  of  all  human  things. 
The  prof  oundest  loss  is  here.  Any  number  of 
writers  and  thinkers  are  sure  in  the  vision  and 
swift  in  the  service  of  the  higher  humanities 
as  such ;  but  when  it  comes  to  the  universal 
and  permanent  significance  of  these  higher 
humanities,  these  prophets  fail.  For  them 
humanity  at  its  best  is  an  alien  in  the  universe ; 
it  has  somehow  forced  its  way  into  this  show 
of  time;  but  it  lives  by  the  consent  of  its 
brute  inferiors,  and  beyond  its  dependent 
existence  there  is  nowhere  any  Supreme  soul 
to  whom  its  excellence  might  make  a  prevail- 
ing appeal,  and  who  might  save  it  with  an 
everlasting  salvation. 

In  the  presence  of  this  denial  the  ques- 
tion of  miracle  is  childish.  Such  a  question  is 
at  best  on  the  circumference  of  the  circle  of 
faith ;  the  question  of  the  permanent  worth  of 


194  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

man  is  the  centre  of  that  circle.  It  is  at  this 
centre  that  the  voice  of  the  prophet  should 
be  heard  to-day.  In  the  perspective  of  diffi- 
culty he  should  stand  here.  The  armies  of  the 
alien  are  massed  at  this  point ;  they  know  the 
citadel  of  Christian  faith,  even  if  preachers 
of  the  Christian  gospel  do  not  know  it.  The 
universal  loss  of  faith  in  the  Infinite  worth, 
he  worth  of  God,  of  man  and  man's  world, 
should  mean  the  extinction  of  the  essential 
joul  of  the  gospel  of  Christ.  With  this  con- 
viction as  to  the  perspective  of  the  values  of 
faith,  it  is  only  right  that  one  should  recall 
Christian  men  from  the  interests  that  are 
secondary  to  those  that  are  deep  as  life.  Fid- 
dling while  Rome  is  burning  is  an  edifying 
occupation  to  none  save  to  those  who  wish  to 
see  the  Eternal  City  in  ashes. 

When  we  leave  these  interests  of  the  intel- 
lect and  enter  the  domain  of  the  practical,  the 
chief  concerns  take  us  into  another  and  a  far 
profounder  world  than  that  of  miracle.  There 
is  the  horror  of  moral  defeat  facing  individuals 
and  nations  as  a  constant  possibility,  in  many 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  195 

cases  as  a  fact.  Here  the  moral  life  of  man, 
the  moral  life  in  civilized  communities,  is  at 
stake.  Individuals  are  every  day  breaking 
down  under  the  burden  of  sensual  oppressions. 
Our  morality  seems  to  be  so  widely  a  question 
of  etiquette  and  diplomacy;  we  appear  to  be 
on  the  borders  of  a  vast  inundation  of  vice. 
Moral  despair  is  creeping  into  the  heart  of 
the  few  brave  idealists;  they  are  asking  if  it 
is  worth  their  while  to  resist  the  devil  at  their 
gate  when  the  other  gates  of  the  city  are  not 
only  open,  but  festooned  with  welcome  to  his 
Satanic  majesty.  The  daily  press  gives  the 
obituaries  of  the  natural  man ;  the  death  of 
the  soul,  of  multitudes  of  souls,  is  not  listed. 
The  idle  talk  about  orthodoxies  and  hetero- 
doxies becomes  a  mean  blasphemy  in  the  pre- 
sence of  this  death  of  the  ideal,  this  surrender 
to  the  brute  that  is  daily  going  on  among 
living  and  suffering  men. 

When  we  look  out  upon  the  business  world, 
we  see  again  the  world  of  Ishmael.  The  hand 
of  man  is  against  man  ;  in  capital  we  have  the 
conscienceless  corporation  atoning  for  its  out- 


196  RELIGION  AND   MIRACLE 

rages  upon  humanity  by  its  gifts  to  education 
and  religion ;  in  labor  we  see  brute  fury 
violating  law,  denying  the  freedom  of  work- 
men, organizing  a  tyranny  more  terrible  than 
modern  society  has  ever  known,  excusing 
itself  on  the  ground  that  there  is  no  other 
way  to  gain  its  rights  and  to  contribute  to 
the  well-being  of  the  people.  Where  in  this 
dismal  outlook  is  there  any  sign  of  brother- 
hood, any  hint  of  victorious  moral  life  ?  While 
one's  sympathies  must  go  with  labor,  because 
of  its  nameless  sufferings  in  the  past,  and  be- 
cause of  its  hard  lot  under  any  possible  com- 
bination of  circumstances ;  while  one  must 
look  with  concern  upon  the  associated  wealth 
of  the  land  because  it  is  so  often  pitiless  as  it 
runs  the  vast  treadmill  in  which  human  beings 
pass  their  sorrowful  years,  yet  the  inclusive 
outlook  leaves  the  impression  that  between 
associated  capital  and  associated  labor  there 
is  little  to  choose.  The  old  economy  rules  in 
both  camps;  the  separation  of  morality  and 
business,  though  the  devil  himself  could  not 
make  it  complete,  is  still  tragically  widespread. 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  197 

The  chief  concern  of  the  business  world  as 
one  looks  at  it  truly,  both  in  its  association  of 
capital  and  of  labor,  is  not  character,  is  notj 
human  worth,  is  not  the  kingdom  of  love,  bu< 
money.  Here  is  an  approximation  to  the  brute 
struggle  for  existence  of  appalling  magnitude ; 
here  is  practical  materialism  on  a  scale  and 
with  a  passionate  intensity  that  in  comparison 
turns  the  philosophic  article  into  moonshine. 
The  leading  nations  of  the  earth  in  no  way 
relieve  the  gloom  of  this  outlook;  they  add  to 
it  a  darkness  all  their  own.  Here  are  Christian 
Britain  and  Christian  Germany  in  deadly  feud, 
each  intrinsically  afraid  of  the  other,  yet  each 
waiting  for  a  chance  to  spring  at  the  throat 
of  the  other.  For  what  cause  ?  Because  Brit- 
ain has  the  sovereignty  of  the  sea  and  fears 
she  may  lose  it,  because  Germany  wants  that 
sovereignty  and  hopes  some  day  to  win  it. 
The  whole  feud  is  an  economic  feud ;  it  has  its 
source  in  the  brute  life  of  both  nations ;  it  is 
the  most  ruthless  exposure  of  the  hollowness 
of  the  moral  life  among  both  peoples.  No  single 
human  goal,  no  distinctly  human  interest,  no 


198  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

conceivable  end  of  morality  or  religion,  justi- 
fies this  irrational  and  savage  hostility. 

But  the  vision  must  be  extended  so  as  to 
include  the  sin,  the  ignorance,  the  capacity 
to  believe  a  lie,  the  incapacity  to  profit  by  ex- 
perience, in  short,  the  moral  tragedy  of  man- 
kind. The  vision  of  sin  and  death  still  rises 
out  of  the  world's  heart ;  and  the  preacher  of 
religion  who  averts  his  sight  from  this  woe  for 
the  sake  of  some  idle  debate  of  a  purely  aca- 
demic nature  would  seem  sadly  mistaken  in  his 
conception  of  man's  supreme  need  and  God's 
answer  in  Christ  to  that  need. 

Mention  must  next  be  made  of  another 
subtle  foe  of  sound  religion,  the  new  belief 
in  religion  as  magic,  as  a  therapeutic  agent  of 
miraculous  power.  This  new  cult  assumes  many 
forms.  In  one  form  it  calls  upon  us  to  deny 
the  existence  of  evil,  to  ignore  disease  and 
pain,  to  believe  that  thought  has  the  power  of 
absolution.  Here,  of  course,  there  is  no  regard 
for  the  fixed  conditions  of  mortal  life,  no  sense 
of  the  determinations  of  the  Eternal  thought 
in  which  men  are  held,  no  concern  for  facts, 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  199 

no  sense  of  law,  nothing  but  the  riot  of  fancy, 
the  play  of  childish  self-will,  the  lunacy  of  ir- 
rational ecstasy.  Religion  as  a  value  in  itself 
is  here  lost.  It  is  a  means  to  an  end  ;  it  exists 
chiefly  as  the  servant  of  the  body ;  it  is  good 
because  it  issues  in  freedom  from  disease  and 
pain,  because  it  imparts  comfort  and  efficiency 
to  the  physical  organism.  Doubtless  these  ends 
are  good,  but  they  do  not  rise  into  the  sphere 
of  true  religion.  Hitherto  the  chief  business 
of  religion  has  been  with  the  character,  the 
state  of  the  heart,  the  soul;  and  in  the  great 
days  of  religion,  men  living  in  its  power  have 
been  concerned  mainly  with  the  moral  and 
spiritual  conditions  of  the  community.  When 
religion  and  rationality  part  company,  religion 
sinks  to  an  agent  in  the  service  of  the  physi- 
cal organism.  A  generation  of  this  way  of 
regarding  religion  would  go  far  to  reduce  it 
to  an  incidental  place  among  the  interests  of 
normal  human  beings. 

The  healing  cult  that  is  annexing  itself  to 
the  office  of  the  preacher  has  its  peril  here. 
Its  evil  tendency  is  evident  in  two  ways :  it 


200  RELIGION   AND  MIRACLE 

looks  at  human  beings  from  the  wrong  side, 
and  it  turns  the  commonplaces  of  psychic  power 
over  the  body  into  magic.  The  human  person 
should  continue  to  be,  at  least  for  the  preacher 
of  Christianity,  essentially  a  spiritual  being, 
one  whose  most  serious  concerns  are  those  of 
character.  The  claims  put  forward  in  behalf 
of  psychic  healing  are  in  favor  of  an  inferior 
interest,  and  they  are  in  general  wild  exagger- 
ations. When  one  sees  whole  bodies  of  appar- 
ently sensible  human  beings  carried  away  by 
the  Christian  Science  craze  or  the  psychic  heal- 
ing infatuation,  one  wonders  if  religion  and 
soul,  religion  and  sanity,  religion  and  the  sov- 
ereignty of  moral  ends,  have  forever  parted 
company. 

The  philosophy  underlying  these  crude  and 
sad  movements  may  seem  at  first  glance  to  be 
the  sovereignty  of  spirit.  A  longer  and  deeper 
gaze  forbids  this  complimentary  conclusion. 
For  what  is  spirit  ?  Is  it  not  moral  will,  true 
thought  done  into  life  through  will  ?  Is  not 
spirit  defined  by  its  ends  ?  Is  not  its  deepest 
trait  worth  ?  Mere  immateriality  is  not  a  sufli- 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  201 

cient  account  of  spirit ;  God  as  a  spirit  is  not 
properly  described  as  an  incorporeal  being,  but 
as  Infinite  love.  Now  in  the  two  forms  of  magic 
to  which  I  have  referred,  the  life  of  the  body  is 
the  main  interest.  The  soul  has  its  chief  value 
as  the  servant  of  the  body ;  the  worth  of  the 
higher  life  is  the  comfort  it  can  bestow  on  the 
lower.  And  here  one  wonders  whether,  if  this 
had  been  primitive  Christianity,  there  would 
have  been  a  cross  at  its  heart,  whether  the 
Divine  youth  with  whom  it  originated  would 
have  thrown  his  life  away,  whether  his  chief 
apostle  would  have  carried  the  Christian  mes- 
sage through  an  empire  in  spite  of  his  thorn 
in  the  flesh,  whether  Christianity  would  have 
bred  men  and  women  who  counted  not  their 
temporal  life  dear  to  them,  that  they  might 
do  the  will  of  God  ?  So  far  as  there  is  any 
philosophy  underlying  these  pathetic  move- 
ments, it  would  seem  to  be  the  sovereignty  of 
the  body  and  the  subordination  of  the  soul. 

The  deepest  aspect  of  these  frantic  uses  of 
religion  is  the  malady  they  reveal ;  they  are 
a  symptom  of  unbelief  in  spirit.   Essential 


202  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

materialism  and  incidental  spiritual  existence 
would  seem  to  express  their  inner  meaning. 
And  it  is  here  that  they  become  signs  of  the 
times.  Materialism  is  dead  as  a  theory  of  the 
universe,  because  there  is  for  science  no  such 
thing  as  matter  according  to  the  older  concep- 
tion of  it.  But  materialism  as  a  condition  of 
human  life  is  universally  recognized ;  physio- 
logical science  has  made  this  condition  clear 
and  impressive  ;  the  physical  organism,  espe- 
cially the  brain,  has  assumed  a  new  importance 
in  the  life  of  man.  So  much  attention  has  been 
devoted  to  the  physical  side  of  human  exist- 
ence that  it  has  gradually  assumed  the  place  of 
chief  concern.  Materialism,  practical  and  vital, 
is  in  the  air  ;  old  beliefs  are  falling  away  in 
consequence;  and  spirit  itself  has  become 
dependent  and  incidental.  The  old  compari- 
son of  the  soul  in  its  relation  to  the  body  as 
bhe  harmony  to  the  harp  gave  better  results, 
'hough  dependent  upon  the  harp,  though 
existence  after  the  harp  was  destroyed  was  im- 
possible, yet  the  harmony  while  it  lasted  was 
a  value  in  itself,  and  testified  to  a  whole  world 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  203 

of  super-material  values.  Here  we  are  brought 
face  to  face  with  another  sign  of  the  times. 
Religion  as  such  seems  to  have  few  friends ; 
few  have  anything  to  say  for  the  soul  as  a 
value  in  itself,  and  for  God  as  the  object,  the 
life  and  joy  of  the  human  spirit. 

To  these  adversaries  of  faith  in  an  eternal 
gospel,  by  which  I  mean  good  tidings  for  this 
world  and  all  worlds  and  good  tidings  chiefly 
for  the  ethical  person,  there  must  be  added 
the  warfare  of  the  sects.  The  Roman  Church 
will  recognize  no  other ;  religion  in  the  pro- 
found and  saving  sense  is  still  in  the  keeping 
of  its  priesthood  ;  Christ  has  but  one  authen- 
tic representative  in  this  world,  and  that  repre- 
sentative is  the  head  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  Here  comes  in  the  Episcopal  Church, 
Anglican  and  American,  claiming  to  be  the 
church,  chiefly  regarding  the  Roman  commun- 
ion as  given  over  to  superstition,  and  emphatic- 
ally setting  at  naught  other  organizations  of 
Christian  men  and  women.  The  Methodist  ap- 
pears, democratic  and  zealous  as  ever,  but  sadly 
entangled  in  obsolete  ideas  and  ecclesiastical 


204  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

jobbery ;  the  Baptist  cannot  surrender  a  mere 
form  even  for  the  sake  of  the  Eternal  Spirit ; 
the  Presbyterian  and  the  Congregationalist 
still  contend  for  one  phase  of  the  world's 
thought  as  the  whole  and  the  final  truth,  and 
outlaw  one  another  on  this  basis.  Here  is  the 
solemn  and  crying  disgrace  of  the  Christian 
faith :  its  interests  are  trivial,  its  spirit  is  in- 
human ;  the  methods  of  its  warfare  are  carnal ; 
its  snobbery,  bigotry,  and  barbarism  are  a  sad 
sight.  In  the  presence  of  this  exhibit,  is  there 
any  wonder  that  the  churches  should  have  so 
slight  a  hold  upon  the  people  of  the  land  ?  As 
they  stand,  they  have  no  right  to  empire ;  they 
are  not  clear  and  earnest  enough  in  intellect, 
nor  are  they  high  enough  in  character,  to  de- 
serve empire.  It  is  a  calamity  when  inferior 
persons  exercise  authority ;  and  this  calamity 
is  not  reduced  when  these  inferior  persons  are 
labeled  religious.  If  the  churches  of  America 
would  exercise  power  over  the  national  life, 
they  must  first  rise  in  intellect  and  in  character ; 
serious,  informed  intellect  and  high  charac- 
ter are  the  ultimate  sources  of  power  ;  and  our 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  205 

Christian  religion  is  a  Divine  tradition,  but  a 
tradition  only  till  it  operates  in  a  clear  and 
sound  mind  and  declares  its  spirit  in  a  great 
character.  Only  so  much  Christian  truth  as 
is  lodged  in  character  is  quick  capital  in  the 
sphere  of  moral  service. 

Authority  and  influence  are  in  general  very 
different  things;  authority  is  mainly  in  the 
office,  in  the  institution,  and  in  the  law  of  the 
institution,  whereas  influence  is  in  the  man,  in 
his  intellect  and  character.  It  is  true  that  we 
speak  of  the  authority  of  the  specialist,  the 
decisive  and  final  word  of  the  man  who  knows, 
and  this  usage  is  not  now  called  in  question. 
The  point  here  made  is  that  authority  does 
not  always  imply  worth  ;  it  is  usually,  in  the 
sphere  of  faith,  a  term  of  compulsion,  a  word 
signifying  the  application  of  force,  a  power  to 
silence  and  to  drive.  The  Protestant  churches 
have  entirely  lost  whatever  of  this  undesirable 
inheritance  they  may  at  one  time  have  pos- 
sessed. Their  hope  is  in  influence,  intellectual 
and  moral ;  and  nothing  can  give  them  this 
influence  but  great  minds  and  true  hearts.  Ed- 


206  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

ucated  and  free  communities  are  not  to  be 
moulded  in  the  highest  things  by  the  incom- 
petent intellect,  even  when  warmed  by  the  good 
heart ;  nor  will  they  follow  the  godless  and 
heartless  thinker  who  deals  with  religion  ;  they 
demand  the  superior  mind  and  the  superior 
human  being,  and  in  him  alone  they  confess 
the  sovereignty  of  influence. 

in 

In  the  final  book  of  the  New  Testament  we 
read  of  an  angel  flying  in  mid-heaven  proclaim- 
ing an  eternal  gospel  to  them  that  dwell  on 
the  earth,  and  to  every  nation  and  tribe  and 
tongue  and  people.  That  eternal  gospel  con- 
tained these  things :  God  and  the  glory  that 
is  his  due  as  the  Infinite  excellence ;  God's 
judgment  in  this  world ;  the  worship  of  God 
as  the  Lord  and  Giver  of  life,  and  as  the  most 
worthy  Judge  Eternal. 

Is  there  any  chance  for  this  angel  to  fly  in 
mid-heaven  to-day,  and  if  he  may  fly,  will  he 
still  have  an  eternal  gospel  to  declare  ?  We 
may  not  be  altogether  satisfied  with  his  former 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  207 

exposition  of  his  eternal  gospel ;  we  may  be- 
lieve that  in  his  first  flight  he  was  in  too  great 
haste  to  lay  open  to  the  heart  his  announce- 
ment of  abiding  good  tidings;  we  may  hope 
that  in  his  second  flight  his  account  of  his 
message  may  be  richer  and  closer  to  the  need 
of  our  troubled  age.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  this  messenger  and  his  message  touch  our 
life  in  its  profoundest  need ;  there  can  be  no 
question  that  when  he  speaks  again  and  speaks 
in  the  idiom  of  our  time,  he  must  be  richer  in 
detail  and  more  explicit  than  he  was  of  old. 

When  troubled  over  the  changing  aspects 
of  our  historic  Christian  faith,  it  is  good  to 
strip  that  faith  bare  and  to  look  at  it  in  its 
naked  majesty.  Our  whole  human  world  is 
summed  up  in  persons ;  souls  in  the  presence 
and  life  of  the  Infinite  soul ;  that  is  the  ulti- 
mate reality  of  our  universe.  Our  faith  is  the 
vision  of  Jesus  concerning  the  meaning  of 
this  universe,  his  insight  set  in  the  authority 
of  his  character,  and  filled  with  the  glory  of 
his  passion.  This  is  the  permanent  centre  of 
our  Christian  faith;  this  is  our  Christianity 


208  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

as  we  shall  hold  it  in  the  invisible  world.  In 
that  invisible  world  the  Bible,  our  dearest 
treasure  here,  will  be  absent ;  there  will  be  no 
church  there,  no  temporal  ritual,  sect,  creed  ; 
no  sacrament  like  Baptism  and  the  Lord's 
Supper ;  no  miracle,  no  division  of  life  into 
sacred  and  secular.  "  The  sun  shall  be  no  more 
thy  light  by  day ;  neither  for  brightness  shall 
the  moon  give  light  unto  thee :  but  the  Lord 
shall  be  unto  thee  an  everlasting  light,  and 
thy  God  thy  glory." l  The  temporal  world  is 
for  a  temporal  end ;  when  that  end  is  served, 
that  order  has  done  its  work ;  when  the  indi- 
vidual ceases  to  exist  in  that  order,  it  ceases 
to  have  further  meaning  for  him.  The  serious 
question  concerns  not  the  temporal  order, 
but  the  Eternal  Spirit  who  meets  man  in  it, 
and  who  educates  man  through  it ;  the  pro- 
foundest  interest  centres  not  in  what  is  bound 
to  pass  away,  but  in  that  which  cannot  pass 
away.  Our  Christian  faith,  considered  sub  spe- 
cie aeternitatis,  sums  itself  up  in  these  great 
simplicities  :  the  object  of  faith,  —  God ;  the 

1  Isaiah  lx,  19. 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  209 

monumental  teacher  of  this  faith,  —  Jesus 
Christ;  the  fellowship  of  it,  —  the  souls 
of  believers ;  the  service  which  it  inspires,  — 
obedience  in  any  one  of  countless  forms,  in 
countless  diverse  situations,  to  the  Eternal 
good  will ;  the  endless  worth  of  personal  being, 
of  personal  being  as  love  in  action,  as  love  in 
possibility. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  a  religion  for 
eternity  is  not  necessarily  suited,  in  all  re- 
spects, to  a  being  in  time.  We  need  elements 
of  faith  in  this  temporal  order  not  needed  in 
that  eternal  order.  Thus  church,  creed,  ritual, 
sacrament,  and  the  great  Bible  come  back,  as 
elements  of  power  and  necessity  in  our  pre- 
sent distress.  Still  the  clear  sense  of  the  tem- 
poral nature  of  these  elements  of  our  faith 
liberates  the  spirit  from  too  much  depend- 
ence upon  them,  imparts  steadiness  amid  the 
changes  that  inevitably  go  with  them,  and  leads 
to  a  wise  and  happy  perspective  of  values.  In 
our  faith  we  find  two  sets  of  values,  the  tem- 
poral and  the  eternal;  therefore  that  cannot  be 
of  supreme  concern  which  dies  with  time ;  that 


210  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

must  be  our  sovereign  interest  which  lasts 
forever. 

An  acute  and  learned  writer  has  recently 
published  a  book  with  this  attractive  title, 
"The  Eternal  Values.,,1  If  this  book  shall 
keep  to  the  heart  the  promise  that  it  makes  to 
the  ear,  here  surely  men  will  find  rest  to  their 
minds.  But  just  here  is  our  difficulty  with  this 
elaborate  and  interesting  production.  While 
it  contains  an  admirable  account  of  the  values 
of  perception,  logical  connection,  our  fellow- 
world,  and  the  world  of  art,  it  brings  no 
authentic  tidings  of  eternal  values  for  man. 
There  is  in  the  final  pages  of  the  book  the 
dim  emergence  of  an  Absolute  for  whom  our 
human  values  may  have  an  eternal  value,  but 
for  that  Absolute  we  men  as  such  are  of  only 
temporal  value. 

The  author  of  this  book  is  fond  of  titles 
that  imply  the  dignity  of  the  higher  aspects 
of  our  human  world ;  it  is  a  grief  to  be  obliged 
to  add  that,  as  he  employs  them,  that  dig- 
nity is  vain.    Eternal  ideals,  eternal  values, 

1  Professor  Munsterberg. 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  211 

what  do  these  fine  words  mean  ?  Ideals  are  the 
visualized  expectations,  the  images  that  em- 
body desire  and  hope,  the  desire  and  hope  of 
persons.  These  images  may  be  of  economic 
good,  scientific,  artistic,  political,  philosophic, 
religious;  whatever  the  ends  may  be  which 
these  visions  represent,  their  length  of  days 
is  strictly  dependent  on  the  length  of  days  of 
the  persons,  or  the  race  of  persons,  that  en- 
tertain them.  An  eternal  ideal  as  the  vision 
or  product  of  a  temporal  race  is  eternal  non- 
sense. The  same  is  true  of  values.  Values  are 
such  to  rational  beings ;  they  may  be  as  nu- 
merous as  are  the  interests  of  man;  they  may 
be  sensuous,  conceptual,  domestic,  national, 
racial,  universal ;  but  whatever  their  worth  may 
be,  that  worth  ceases  when  the  persons  or  the 
races  of  persons  for  whom  they  have  worth 
become  extinct.  Eternal  ideals  and  eternal 
values  as  the  possession  or  production  of  a 
temporal  race  are  manifest  impossibilities.  It 
is  almost  needless  to  say  that  eternal  ideals 
and  values  belong  only  to  spiritual  beings  who 
last  forever ;  and  if  the  Absolute  alone  lasts 


212  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

forever,  he  alone  is  in  possession  of  eternal 
ideals  and  values.  With  all  due  respect  to 
this  Absolute  for  whom  everything  exists  that 
does  exist,  and  in  whose  presence  nothing 
that  lives  is  of  any  account  for  itself,  the  chief 
concern  of  human  beings  is  with  human  ideals 
and  values.  To  call  us  to  the  study  of  Eternal 
Ideals  and  Eternal  Values  and  then  to  tell 
us  in  our  high-raised  expectations  that  these 
ideals  and  values  are  not  for  us,  is  to  give  us 
a  scorpion  for  an  egg,  to  keep  the  promise  of 
infinite  good  to  the  ear  and  to  break  it  to  the 
mind.  If  man's  world  is  wholly  temporal,  let 
it  be  so  described ;  if  man  ceases  to  be  as  a 
person  at  death,  again  let  us  hear  our  sentence 
in  plain  words.  In  the  presence  of  fate  we 
shall  resolve  with  Nicias  and  his  army,  "  We 
shall  do  what  men  may  and  bear  what  men 
must."  But  on  no  account  let  us  juggle  with 
words;  let  us  not  dream  that  we  discover 
eternal  ideals  and  values  for  men  when  the 
race  of  men  is  a  mere  incident  in  the  endless 
(evolutions  of  the  cosmos.  And  if  we  think 
that  men  should  be  willing  to  be  damned  for 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  213 

the  glory  of  the  Absolute,  let  us  beware  lest 
our  Absolute,  in  making  this  requisition  upon 
moral  beings,  turn  out  to  be  not  the  Infinite 
Perfection,  but  the  Infinite  Cannibal,  not  the 
God  and  Father  whose  tender  mercies  are  over 
all  his  works,  but  the  devil  that  is  the  slan- 
derer, the  enemy  of  man. 

An  eternal  gospel  identifies  the  being  of  man 
as  spirit  and  the  being  of  God.  In  such  a  gos- 
pel we  do  not  have  two  sets  of  ideals  and  two 
sets  of  values ;  we  have  one  order  for  God  and 
man,  with  this  difference,  that  while  this  order 
of  ideals  and  values  in  the  case  of  God  is 
immediate  and  complete,  it  dawns  upon  man 
through  the  atmosphere  of  the  temporal  world, 
and  lives  among  its  fires  and  storms.  The 
essential  kinship  of  God  and  man  is  the  heart 
of  the  Christian  faith;  without  this  essential 
and  endless  kinship,  eternal  good  tidings  for 
man  there  can  be  none.  With  this  f  undamen; 
tal  assurance  that  in  virtue  of  thought,  moral 
accountability,  and  responsible  action,  there  is 
essential  identity  of  being  between  God  and 
man,  we  have  still  eternal  good  tidings  to  pro- 


214  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

claim  to  mankind.  For  then  the  whole  contrast 
of  the  Infinite  to  the  finite,  the  Perfect  to  the 
imperfect,  the  Universal  Spirit  to  the  individ- 
ual human  being,  is  but  the  contrast  of  the 
Eternal  Father  to  his  child  in  time;  the  contrast 
is  all  in  our  interest.  Because  his  thoughts  are 
not  our  thoughts,  because  his  ways  are  not  our 
ways,  because  as  the  heavens  are  higher  than 
the  earth,  so  are  his  thoughts  and  ways  higher 
than  ours,  therefore  we  are  the  more  able  to  be- 
lieve the  call,  "  Let  the  wicked  forsake  his  way, 
and  the  unrighteous  man  his  thoughts :  and 
let  him  return  unto  the  Lord,  and  he  will  have 
mercy  upon  him ;  and  to  our  God,  for  he  will 
abundantly  pardon."  *  When  we  pray,  "Our 
Father  who  art  in  heaven,"  we  claim  kinship 
with  the  Eternal  Spirit,  we  set  that  kinship 
in  the  heart  of  infinite  contrast;  yet  this  con- 
trast is  all  in  our  favor.  It  is  of  the  Lord's 
mercy  that  we  are  not  consumed ;  because  his 
compassions  fail  not;  they  are  new  every 
morning  and  fresh  every  evening.  The  iden- 
tity of  man  with  God  is  supported  by  an  infi- 

1  Isaiah  lv,  7. 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  215 

nite  contrast  of  wisdom  and  power  and  com- 
passion. 

Our  human  world  is  our  supreme  concern; 
life  in  that  world  is  either  a  permanent  possible 
or  a  permanent  actual  value.  The  quality  pos- 
sessed by  the  finest  spirits  is  a  value  for  all 
moral  beings  in  all  worlds.  The  conceptions  in 
which  the  philosophy  of  Socrates  consisted  have 
long  ago  been  transcended;  they  were  tran- 
scended by  Plato,  his  chief  disciple,  and  still 
further  by  Plato's  great  disciple ;  but  Socrates 
confronting  death  with  the  cup  of  hemlock  in 
his  hand,  as  depicted  in  the  closing  chapter  of 
the  "Phsedo,"  has  never  been  transcended  and 
never  will  be.  The  history  of  his  people  and  the 
philosophy  of  that  history  given  by  Stephen, 
his  insight  into  the  genius  of  the  new  religion 
and  his  apology  for  it,  have  been  transcended; 
but  the  spirit  that  went  up  to  God  through  the 
shower  of  stones  that  ended  his  life — "Lord, 
lay  not  this  sin  to  their  charge"  —  has  never 
been  transcended,  and  again,  it  will  never  be. 
Fortitude,  moral  serenity,  magnanimity,  and 
devotion  to  the  highest,  when  they  appear  in  a 


216  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

human  person,  are  seen  at  once  to  be  values 
for  all  men  in  all  time,  and  for  the  universe, 
if  it  is  noble  enough  to  care  for  such  things. 
These  values  in  the  highest  spirits  become 
ideals  for  the  rest;  values  and  ideals  alike  are 
both  human  and  eternal,  if  man  and  God  care 
for  the  best  things. 

With  this  insight  into  life  gained  from  su- 
preme spirits  we  note  at  once  that  human  re- 
lationships are  moral  to  the  core.  The  animal 
ends  are  to  be  held  in  control  by  ends  of  jus- 
tice and  mercy;  the  forms  in  which  human 
beings  associate,  economic,  domestic,  political, 
scientific,  artistic,  philosophic,  are  in  their  final 
meaning  ethical;  they  have  their  deepest  sig- 
nificance as  an  organism  for  the  development 
and  expression  of  eternal  moral  values. 

This  brings  us  to  our  accountability  to  God; 
and  here  we  see  the  ground  of  a  living  and 
potent  religion,  a  living  and  potent  humanity. 
Religion  lives  in  the  vision  of  God;  man  lives 
in  the  religion  that  is  the  vision  and  service  of 
God,  the  God  with  whom  he  is  at  heart  one, 
in  whose  spirit  his  spirit  is  to  be  cleansed  and 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  217 

perfected.  The  Christian  religion  is  the  vision 
of  God  in  Jesus  Christ,  the  vision  of  man  as 
the  child  of  God  in  the  same  Teacher;  the  rev- 
elation through  him  that  the  meaning  of  exist- 
ence is  moral ;  that  goodness  in  human  beings 
and  the  possibility  of  it  are  values  for  the  uni- 
verse; that  the  life  of  our  kind  follows  an 
order  of  ideals  and  values  identical  with  that 
followed  by  the  Eternal  Spirit,  because  at  heart 
he  and  we  are  one. 

IV 

Several  times  I  have  said  in  this  discussion 
that  our  chief  difficulties  in  religion  are  to  be 
solved  by  prof  ounder  living  in  God.  Questions 
of  scholarship  are  important  and  at  the  same 
time  secondary;  questions  in  the  philosophy 
of  religion  go  much  deeper,  yet  there  is  a  depth 
below  them;  for  the  philosophy  of  religion 
is  the  rational  account  of  religion  as  fact,  as 
life  and  power.  In  religion  itself  there  is  a 
synthesis  of  the  highest  powers  in  man,  insight, 
feeling,  will ;  this  synthesis  generates  a  special 
experience,  and  this  special  experience  is  the 


218  RELIGION  AND   MIRACLE 

sovereign  thing  in  the  history  of  the  race.  To- 
day one  meets  the  denial  of  the  moral  ideal ; 
and  the  question  comes,  How  shall  that  denial 
be  met?  It  may  be  met  by  argument  and  by 
life,  but  life  alone  is  the  conclusive  answer. 
We  may  point  to  Socrates,  Luther,  Lincoln, 
to  the  great  as  they  have  given  a  new  turn  to 
human  history ;  or  we  may  look  into  the  moral 
life  of  good  men  in  all  history.  We  find  men 
living  in  a  system  of  relationships;  out  of 
these  relationships  have  come  ideals.  There  is 
no  fact  better  attested  in  the  history  of  man 
than  the  presence  of  the  ideal  in  morally 
awakened  human  beings.  And  this  ideal  is  the 
sign  of  the  complete  human  existence  as  that 
is  understood  by  each  idealist.  Whether  the 
lower  animals  form  and  entertain  ideals,  we  do 
not  know;  whether  there  is  in  them  anything 
higher  than  images  of  gratified  appetite,  we 
may  not  be  prepared  to  say ;  but  in  men,  when 
morally  awakened,  there  is  the  hunger  for  the 
perfect  life  in  God,  the  need  that  expresses 
itself  in  the  old  words,  "  I  shall  be  satisfied 
when  I  awake  in  thy  likeness. " 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  219 

The  moral  ideal  is  admitted,  but  it  is  said 
that  it  is  without  influence.  Biology  is  not 
amenable  to  thought;  organic  processes  are 
inevitable,  and  go  their  way  careless  of  the 
moral  ideal.  Hunger,  thirst,  the  reproductive 
instinct,  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  the 
changes  in  the  nerve  centres  and  in  the  brain, 
in  fact,  all  the  main  processes  of  physiology 
and  biology,  are  independent  of  thought,  and 
moral  ideals  and  resolves  are  powerless  in  their 
presence.  This  is  the  deepest  denial  in  our 
time,  the  frankest  and  the  most  audacious  con- 
fession of  the  sovereignty  of  the  lower  in  man 
and  in  the  universe  over  the  higher.  At  the 
same  time  it  is,  for  the  morally  unawakened, 
the  hardest  foe  to  meet  and  vanquish.  For  them 
there  is  little  or  none  of  that  great  special  ex- 
perience to  which  such  a  denial  is  idle  chatter. 

This  deepest  and  saddest  denial  of  our  time 
must  be  met  by  argument,  and  yet  more  by 
the  witness  of  experience.  Hunger  and  thirst 
are  organic  processes ;  no  man  by  thought  can 
arrest  or  diminish  these  desires ;  but  all  decent 
human  beings  control  them  through  civilized 


220  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

thought.  The  denial  is  perhaps  leveled  more 
directly  at  the  sex  instinct  than  at  any  other 
organic  force  in  human  nature.  Here  let  ap- 
peal be  taken  to  chaste  youth,  and  the  power 
of  thought  over  biological  processes  will  be- 
come evident.  Every  morally  awakened  young 
man  who  has  faced  his  animal  inheritance  in 
the  strength  of  his  rational  possessions,  who 
has  looked  upon  his  passions  growing  into  a 
group  of  wild  beasts,  and  who  has  resolved  to 
tame  these  beasts,  can  refute  the  denial  in  ques- 
tion. He  knows  that  as  a  man  thinketh  in  his 
heart,  so  is  he ;  he  knows  with  the  Greek  Aris- 
totle that  desire  originates  through  thought;1 
that  physical  discomfort  in  the  organism  can- 
not become  definite  and  inflamed  desire  till 
taken  up  and  shaped  by  thought;  that  upon 
the  reproductive  instinct  adverse  thought  has 
an  immediate  influence;  that  this  style  of 
thought  maintained  penetrates  to  the  inmost 
processes  of  the  organism  and  fixes  there  a 
real  and  wholesome  dominion.  And  when  this 
thought  adverse  to  the  sovereignty  of  the  sex 

1  Meta.  B.  11,  7. 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  221 

instinct  expresses  itself  in  games,  in  a  variety 
of  intellectual  interests,  in  any  one  of  a  large 
number  of  possible  ambitions,  economic,  artis- 
tic, scientific,  philanthropic;  above  all,  when  it 
utters  itself  in  definite  moral  service,  it  attains 
to  a  substantial  mastery  of  the  soul.  Indeed, 
in  the  presence  of  the  force  that  oftener  runs 
wild  than  any  other  in  human  nature,  it  should 
be  said  that  no  instinct  in  man  is  more  sus- 
ceptible of  transformation  and  right  direction. 
That  human  beings  so  often  fail  here  marks 
weakness,  but  not  incapacity  for  strength ;  and 
on  the  other  hand,  the  jubilant  moral  life  of 
youth  redeemed  through  thought  brings  in 
the  overwhelming  answer  to  the  pathetic  denial 
of  ideal  power. 

So  much  is  certainly  sound  in  the  mental 
healing  craze,  that  right  thinking  has  a  decided 
influence  upon  the  functions  of  the  body. 
There  is  perhaps  hardly  an  organ  in  the  body 
whose  condition  and  operation  are  not  subject 
to  the  power  of  the  mind ;  and  till  degeneration 
becomes  decided,  the  intelligence  is  a  co-effi- 
cient in  the  production  of  health.  Even  in  dis- 


222  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

ease,  the  mind  is  capable  of  abstraction;  it  is 
able  in  no  small  measure  to  ignore  and  tran- 
scend the  reports  and  agitations  that  pour  in 
from  the  distressed  physical  organism;  it  is 
strong  enough,  as  in  the  case  of  the  late  Pro- 
fessor Mulf  ord,  or  W.  Robertson  Smith, '  to 
discuss  the  sentence  of  death  by  an  incurable 
disease,  then  to  dismiss  it  and  turn  to  the  old 
paths  of  thought. 

The  denial  of  the  influence  of  the  moral 
ideal  over  conduct,  and  still  more  over  the 
currents  of  the  soul,  has  a  pathetic  genesis.  It 
finds  its  primary  suggestion,  perhaps,  in  the 
study  of  nervous  pathology ;  this  suggestion  is 
forced  into  the  mind  of  the  student  by  the 
observed  influence  of  the  body  upon  the  in- 
telligence ;  here  is  apt  to  follow  the  hasty  gen- 
eralization that  all  thought  is  the  mere  inci- 
dence of  organic  processes  in  the  brain,  a 
world  created  by  material  conditions,  shunted 
off  by  itself  for  a  while,  possessing  splendors 
and  glooms  of  its  own,  but  always  the  creature, 
and  finally  the  victim,  of  brute  matter. 

1  J.  Bryce,  Studies  in  Contemporary  Biography,  p.  325. 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  223 

This  state  of  mind  is  further  confirmed,  in 
many  cases,  by  the  absence  of  full  opportu- 
nity for  action.  By  itself  the  intellectual  life  is 
not  enough ;  it  leads  astray  when  left  to  itself. 
Fichte  delivered  himself  from  the  dominion 
of  physical  necessity  by  the  power  of  thought; 
he  delivered  himself  from  the  impotence  of 
thought  by  the  moral  will.  Action  is  the  final 
revelation  of  reality;  and  lives  spent  exclu- 
sively in  thought  inevitably  fall  into  despair 
over  its  worth.  Amiel  is  optimist  and  pessimist, 
agnostic,  atheist,  theist;  Catholic,  Protestant, 
Buddhist ;  in  short,  he  is  everything  by  turns, 
because  he  is  so  little  at  home  in  the  world 
of  moral  service.  When  one's  inmost  thought 
is  this :  "  I  must  work  the  works  of  him  that 
sent  me  while  it  is  day ;  the  night  cometh  in 
which  no  man  can  work,"  his  thought  is  put  to 
the  test,  and  in  the  moral  test  attains  to  moral 
reality. 

Still  further,  the  pathetic  denial  of  the  in- 
fluence of  the  ideal  comes  from  the  confusion 
of  the  ideal  with  a  mere  sentimental  dream. 
It  is  from  sentimental  writers  that  we  hear 


224  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

most  about  the  ideal ;  serious  ethical  writers 
have  adopted  their  fine  word,  but  it  must  never 
be  forgotten  that  different  meanings  are  at- 
tached to  it  by  the  two  classes  of  thinkers. 
For  the  sentimentalist  the  ideal  is  a  mental 
picture  and  no  more ;  for  the  ethical  thinker 
it  is  the  voice  of  conscience  in  the  imagina- 
tion. To  one  man  the  ideal  is  only  an  image, 
beautiful  but  impotent,  like  the  dream  of  a 
love-sick  youth  over  the  girl  who  has  chosen 
another  than  himself ;  to  the  other  the  ideal  is 
duty  rising  in  splendor  through  the  atmosphere 
of  the  imagination.  Mere  sentiment  is  surely 
the  nearest  to  impotence  of  any  of  the  expe- 
riences of  mortal  men,  and  for  any  person  who 
tries  to  meet  the  stern  and  tremendous  forces 
of  the  lower  life  with  nothing  stronger  than 
the  weapons  of  the  sentimentalist,  there  can  be 
but  one  issue.  The  appeal  is,  after  all,  to  life. 
Every  man  has  the  chance  to  answer  for  him- 
self the  statement  that  the  ideal  is  impotent. 
He  may  meet  that  statement  in  the  awe  and 
joy  of  a  manhood  controlled  out  of  the  ideal, 
standing  in  the  great  process  of  moral  trans- 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  225 

formation,  sure  of  growth,  sure  of  the  forces 
that  have  brought  it  and  that  promise  more. 
And  this  personal  experience  of  victory  over 
passion  in  the  strength  of  the  ideal  he  will 
broaden  into  the  great  tradition  of  the  supreme 
moral  idealists.  He  will  recall  Jesus  and  his 
sovereign  idealism ;  he  will  not  forget  the  ideal- 
ism of  the  Hebrew  prophets ;  of  Paul,  Augus- 
tine, and  Luther ;  of  the  company  that  no  man 
can  number,  who  out  of  weakness  were  made 
strong,  who  came  out  of  the  great  tribulation, 
and  washed  their  robes  and  made  them  white 
in  the  power  of  the  ideal.  He  will  conclude 
that  the  denial  of  religion  is  never  so  easy  of 
refutation  as  when  it  contests  the  reality  of 
the  life  of  man  in  God. 

It  is  said  that  religion  is  a  tangle  of  errors 
and  superstitions ;  therefore  it  is  for  the  un- 
educated. This  charge  must  be  laid  to  heart. 
But  so  far  as  it  is  true,  the  same  may  be  said 
of  every  human  interest.  There  is  no  single 
human  interest  in  an  ideal  condition.  Even 
science  runs  wild,  and  on  the  pin-point  of  ev- 
idence tries  to  balance  the  universe  of  truth. 


226  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

Art  is  beset  behind  and  before  with  fads  and 
superstitions.  Philosophy  is  sane  only  now  and 
then ;  and  among  its  devotees  wisdom  and  the 
love  of  it  are  often  sadly  left  out  of  the  ac- 
count. Politics  as  a  science  and  still  more  as 
an  art  is  in  dire  confusion ;  the  domestic  life 
of  man,  his  deepest  life  as  a  creature  of  time, 
is  in  wild  disorder.  What  is  to  be  done  ?  Are 
we  to  abandon  all  the  interests  of  the  scholar, 
the  scientist,  the  artist,  the  man  of  the  world, 
and  the  man  of  speculation,  because  confusion 
reigns  everywhere  ?  By  no  means ;  these  inter- 
ests are  the  life  of  our  human  world,  and  we 
will  work  together  to  put  them  in  better  order. 
Some  day,  a  thousand  years  hence,  perhaps, 
our  effort  to  improve  things  will  be  represented 
in  an  approximation  to  the  ideal  condition  on 
the  part  of  all  these  interests. 

Precisely  so  we  reason  about  religion.  Truth 
and  error  are  sadly  mixed  in  it;  reality  and 
unreality,  substance  and  superstition,  are  too 
often  rolled  into  one  mass,  and  we  are  invited 
to  accept  this  total  as  from  the  Highest.  Still 
further,  there  is  often  little  perspective  of  val- 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  227 

ues  in  modern  religion.  What  then  ?  Shall  we 
abandon  this  sovereign  human  interest  to  the 
inferior  intellect  and  the  incompetent  ?  By  no 
means ;  we  will  struggle  together  to  separate 
the  wheat  from  the  chaff,  the  substance  from 
the  ugly  superstition  that  clings  to  it ;  we  will 
strive  to  bequeath  to  our  children  the  purer 
and  the  greater  religion,  hoping  that  finally, 
when  the  temple  of  God  in  man  is  complete, 
our  poor  endeavor  will  be  represented  and 
honored  there. 

It  is  said  that  man  is  not  made  in  the  im- 
age of  God;  that  God  is  made  in  the  image 
of  man.  Here  it  is  true  that  we  make  God 
in  our  image;  we  can  understand  God  only 
through  the  forms  of  human  intelligence.  But 
this  is  no  reason  for  the  denial  that  man  is 
made  in  the  image  of  God.  Surely  man  owes 
his  being  to  the  universe  ;  he  has  been  made 
a  person,  a  thinker,  and  a  responsible  doer  in 
this  world ;  since  nowhere  within  sight  is  there 
any  pattern  according  to  which  his  being  has 
been  shaped,  is  it  unreasonable  to  infer  that 
the  archetype  of  the  moral  being  of  man  is  the 


228  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

moral  being  of  God  ?  An  antecedent  man  must 
have,  an  antecedent  adequate  to  account  for 
him  ;  and  is  there  any  better  hypothesis  here 
than  the  statement  of  religious  faith  that  the 
highest  in  this  world  is  made  in  the  image  of 
the  Highest  in  the  universe?  We  confess  at 
once  that  we  make  God  in  the  image  of  man, 
and  we  contend  that  we  are  able  to  do  this 
because  God  made  man  in  the  image  of  himself 
as  the  supreme  thinker  and  doer,  the  archety- 
pal moral  being. 

But  here  again  the  answer  of  thought  should 
be  supplemented  by  the  answer  of  life.  That 
God  is  a  mere  idealization  imposed  upon  the 
universe  by  man  is  refuted  in  the  great  trial 
of  the  soul.  "I  saw  the  Lord," said  Isaiah ;  "I 
have  seen  God  face  to  face,"  said  another. 
Moral  life  is  in  the  strength  of  the  ideal,  and 
the  ideal  leads  to  him  who  is  the  sum  of  all 
our  ideals  and  infinitely  more.  In  the  process 
of  moral  life  the  soul  meets  God  as  its  light 
and  salvation  ;  here  it  grasps  the  Infinite  other 
of  itself  ;  and  when  distress  is  at  its  deepest, 
its  cry  is,  "  Though  he  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  229 

in  him."  When  the  cup  is  the  cup  of  woe  and 
death,  it  is  here  chosen  because  it  is  his  will. 
In  the  great  process  of  the  moral  life  God  is 
the  immediate  and  sure  possession  of  the  soul. 
The  religious  man,  whose  religion  has  become 
a  profound  and  victorious  life,  cries,  "  I  know 
how  to  be  abased,  and  I  know  how  to  abound ; 
I  can  do  all  things  through  him  that  strength- 
ened me."  Whether  it  be  Paul  that  utters  that 
cry,  or  Cromwell  weeping  over  the  son  dead 
in  battle,  or  any  soul  anywhere,  high  or  hum- 
ble, the  fact  is  the  same.  In  the  utmost  life 
of  man  God  stands  revealed  as  man's  Deliverer 
and  Father. 

The  confidence  of  reason  is  great ;  the  con- 
fidence of  personal  experience  in  the  moral 
process  of  existence  is  greater.  Our  thoughts 
are  imperfect ;  in  the  possessions  of  the  heart 
and  in  the  perpetually  renewed  service  of  the 
ideal  we  find  our  chief  peace.  There  is  such 
a  thing  in  the  world  to-day  as  the  secret  of  the 
Lord,  and  it  is  with  them  who  in  awe  and  love 
wait  upon  him.  Covenants  with  God  are  still 
made,  and  when  made  in  tears  and  blood,  they 


230  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

stand  fast.  The  profounder  life  in  God  turns 
either  into  agents  of  intellectual  discipline  or 
things  childish,  current  denials  of  the  realities 
of  faith.  Religious  men  are  moved  by  them 
only  as  shallow  seas  are  by  winds;  religious 
men  are  ineffective  in  meeting  these  denials 
because  their  life  in  God  is  wanting  in  depth 
and  peace. 


Books  on  the  philosophy  of  religion  multi- 
ply, and  many  of  them  are  serious  contribu- 
tions to  thought :  still,  it  must  be  said  of  the 
greater  number  of  them  that  what  one  misses 
in  them  is  a  profound  religious  consciousness. 
The  greater  number  of  these  books  seem  to  be 
a  philosophy  of  other  men's  religion,  imper- 
fectly appreciated,  and  by  writers  who  have 
little  or  no  religion  themselves.  Aristotle  is 
to  be  admired  on  many  counts;  he  is  to  be 
admired  especially  because,  having  no  religion 
himself,  he  did  not  treat  of  the  philosophy  of 
religion.  This  great  master  of  thought  con- 
fined himself  to  those  departments  of  human 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  231 

experience  in  which  he  had  a  profound  share. 
He  knew  well  that  without  the  rich  and  unus- 
ual experience  there  cannot  come  into  exist- 
ence the  mature  and  adequate  philosophy. 
The  indictment  to  be  brought  against  much 
that  calls  itself  a  philosophy  of  religion  is  that  it 
is  without  first-hand  and  profound  knowledge 
of  religion ;  that  it  is  mainly  an  endeavor,  and 
it  must  be  added  a  poor  endeavor,  to  account 
for  the  religion  of  other  people. 

Before  we  can  advance  wisely  in  this  dis- 
cipline, we  need  a  prof ounder  religious  con- 
sciousness. Indeed,  the  religious  consciousness 
carries  with  it  its  philosophy ;  the  Eternal  is 
its  dwelling-place ;  it  has  only  to  make  explicit 
what  is  already  implicit  and  part  of  its  life. 
In  the  interest  of  thought,  still  more  in  the 
interest  of  man,  the  call  must  be  to  a  new  and 
a  deeper  life  in  God.  Men  must  cease  to  play 
with  the  moral  ideal ;  they  must  boast  about 
it  no  longer  as  the  high  possession  of  the  soul ; 
they  must  break  up  the  habit  of  gossip  con- 
cerning its  subjectivity ;  they  must  translate  it 
into  duty  with  the  sanction  of  the  Eternal  in  it. 


232  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

Religion  takes  its  own  way  in  the  service  of 
the  soul.  It  goes  out  in  a  great  order  of  ex- 
perimentation. It  takes  this  current  dogma  of 
the  subjectivity  of  all  our  thoughts  and  it  puts 
it  to  the  test  of  life.  There  it  breaks  down ; 
there  the  objectivity  of  thought  finds  its  vin- 
dication. In  and  through  the  process  of  moral 
life  men  find  that  their  best  thoughts  are  valid 
for  all  moods,  for  all  days  and  years,  and  that 
when  sincerely  adopted  they  bring  a  similar 
freedom  and  peace  to  all  men.  The  universal 
and  the  permanent  is  the  true  objective;  what 
holds  good  for  all  men  all  the  time  may  well 
be  held  as  carrying  in  it  the  sanction  of  God. 
The  religious  man  is  driven  to  this  conclusion. 
He  takes  his  best  thoughts,  lifts  them  to  God; 
there  he  sees  them  filled  with  God's  sanction 
and  sent  back  from  him  invested  with  the  au- 
thority of  his  truth.  For  the  believer  in  God 
there  must  be  an  order  of  God  for  human  life ; 
this  order  is  to  be  found  through  the  severest 
experimentation;  when  from  this  experimen- 
tation the  valid  thoughts  emerge,  they  stand 
forth  as  the  will  of  God  for  man.  In  one  way 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  233 

or  another  the  religious  man  must  escape  from 
the  circle  of  mere  subjectivity.  That  circle  is 
a  circle  of  death ;  it  is  the  spiritual  whirlpool 
of  serious  and  thoughtful  men  to-day.  Here, 
as  I  have  said,  is  one  way  of  escape :  the  way 
of  the  spirit  is  experimentation ;  the  univer- 
sally and  permanently  valid  for  the  best  life 
of  the  moral  person  is  the  objective;  in  that 
objective  the  soul  rests  in  the  Divine  will. 

The  sense  of  sin  must  return.  To-day  it 
lives  chiefly  in  ancient  hymns  and  liturgies. 
The  reason  of  all  this  lies  in  the  shallowness 
of  the  moral  and  religious  sense.  The  moral 
ideal  is  a  sublime  picture,  and  as  such  it  is 
to  be  admired  and  talked  about;  so  much  the 
devil  of  mere  subjectivity  enjoins.  The  moral 
ideal  appears  in  the  wintry  atmosphere  of  lives 
conformed  to  the  evil  custom  of  the  world, 
appears  there  pale  and  feeble,  and  a  word  of 
thankfulness  for  its  relieving  glow  seems  to 
be  all  that  is  demanded  by  the  situation. 
When  the  moral  ideal  appears  as  the  face  and 
eyes  of  God,  reading  the  secret  shame  of  man's 
heart,  sending  home  the  conviction  of  his  mis- 


234  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

taken  and  perverse  ways,  revealing  the  utter 
falsehood  and  hollowness  of  his  life,  bringing 
him  into  the  presence  of  the  Eternal  honor 
and  keeping  him  there  in  moral  torture,  like 
one  of  old  he  will  cry,  "Woe  is  me!  for  I  am 
undone;  because  I  am  a  man  of  unclean  lips, 
and  I  dwell  in  the  midst  of  a  people  of  unclean 
lips:  for  mine  eyes  have  seen  the  King,  the 
Lord  of  hosts."1  Religion  cannot  long  endure 
when  conscience  has  been  dismissed;  the  recall 
and  reinvestment  of  conscience  is  an  essential 
condition  of  the  return  of  profound  and  true 
religion.  Of  old,  the  secret  of  the  Lord  was 
with  them  that  feared  him;  to-day,  it  has  gone 
with  the  Pharisee  and  the  impenitent  thief. 
It  was  otherwise  in  times  when  religion  was 
great : — 

The  path  of  the  righteous  is  as  the  shining  light, 
That  shineth  more  and  more  unto  the  perfect  day.2 

It  was  otherwise  when  religion  began  in  a 
great  moral  revolution:  God,  be  merciful  to 
me  a  sinner;   I  was  not  disobedient  to  the 

1  Isaiah  vi,  5.  2  Proverbs  iv,  18. 


AN  ETERNAL  GOSPEL  235 

heavenly  vision ;  behold,  the  half  of  my  goods 
I  give  to  the  poor,  and  if  I  have  taken  any- 
thing from  any  man  by  extortion,  I  restore 
him  fourfold;  except  your  righteousness  shall 
exceed  the  righteousness  of  the  Scribes  and 
Pharisees,  ye  shall  not  enter  into  the  kingdom 
of  heaven. 

On  the  basis  of  the  moral  ideal  as  the  image 
of  the  moral  will  of  God  for  man,  in  awe  and 
tears,  religion  begins  and  goes  on  in  the  power 
of  a  new  lif e.  Vision,  prayer,  fellowship,  service, 
struggle,  and  victory  are  the  great  notes  of 
that  new  existence.  It  is  this  new  existence  in 
individuals,  in  churches,  in  vast  bodies  of  men, 
that  is  to-day  our  deepest  need.  The  chemist 
without  food  dies  like  his  ignorant  brother, 
and  the  philosopher  of  religion  is  an  even  more 
pitiable  sight  than  the  multitude  for  whom 
there  is  no  open  vision.  The  more  and  more 
adequate  account  of  religion  is  the  work  of 
gifted  minds  in  the  long  succession  of  the 
ages ;  meanwhile  we  are  here  to-day  and  to- 
morrow we  are  gone.  Is  there  nothing  for  us  on 
our  swift  race  through  time,  nothing  but  the 


236  RELIGION  AND  MIRACLE 

accounts  of  religion  which  men  give  who  have 
at  best  only  a  pathetic  share  in  its  wondrous 
life  and  power?  Is  there  for  us  no  Eternal  God 
in  whom  to  put  our  whole  trust  as  we  stand  at 
the  task  of  moral  persons,  and  in  the  labor 
and  sorrow  of  time?  Are  the  vision,  the  self- 
abasement,  the  self -surrender,  and  the  rapture 
of  religion  forbidden  to  us,  and  the  service 
that  in  its  might  becomes  a  song?  Religious 
men  know  that  it  is  otherwise ;  they  have  sat 
at  the  feet  of  the  great;  they  have  entered 
forever  the  school  of  Christ  as  disciples  there ; 
they  are  in  the  conduct  of  a  solemn  personal 
experimentation  in  the  things  of  the  soul ;  they 
know  that  their  Redeemer  liveth ;  their  God 
is  their  glory. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abraham,  the  migration  of,  39. 
Accountability  to  God,  216. 
Amiel,  223. 
Amos,  a  great  representative  of 

spiritual  religion,  59,  60. 
Angel,  the,  of  the  eternal  gospel, 

206,  207. 
Antigone  and  CEdipus,  145. 
Apollos,  36. 
Apostles,  the,  with  Jesus,  112, 

113 ;  effect  of  his  resurrection 

on,  114,  115. 
Arabian  Nights,  real  to  children, 

26. 
Argument,  weakened  by  bias, 

5,6. 
Aristodemus,  the  little  atheist, 

73. 
Aristotle,  11,143;  on  nature,  15, 

16 ;  on  parenthood,  101,  102 ; 

to  be  admired  because  he  did 

not  treat  of  the  philosophy  of 

religion,  230. 
Arnold,     Matthew,    "  Monica's 

Last  Prayer  "  quoted,  80,  81 ; 

"Rugby  Chapel,"  159-164. 
Augustine,  St.,  "  Confessions," 

80,  82,  140. 
Authority  and  influence,  205. 

Belief,  not  limited  to  the  verifi- 
able, 36,  37 ;  confusion  in  the 
field  of,  151. 

Berkeley,  George,  theistic  argu- 
ment of,  74,  75. 


Bible,  the,  modern  study  of,  23 
the  vision  of  God  in,  65-72 
the  great  debate  about,  152 
and  the  Holy  Ghost,  155. 

Bradley,  Francis  Herbert,  his 
"Appearance  and  Reality," 
190, 191. 

Bryce,  James,  222. 

Bushnell,  Horace,  141. 

Business  world,  the,  195,  196; 
money  its  chief  concern,  197. 

Calvin,  John,  14,  15,  141. 

Capital  and  labor,  196. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  his  study  of 
the  French  Revolution,  60 ; 
"  The  Everlasting  Yea,"  79. 

Cause  and  effect,  12,  20,  21. 

Character,  a  product  and  an 
achievement,  88. 

Cheyne,  T.  K.,  his  method  of 
cutting  up  Isaiah,  37. 

Christian  church,  good  work 
done  by,  180,  181 ;  the  mass 
of  its  members,  183. 

Christian  faith,  see  Faith. 

Christian  (religion,  the,  7;  only 
two  things  absolutely  essential 
to,  8;  like  other  religions  in 
point  of  miracles,  45 ;  see  also 
Religion. 

Christian  Science,  198,  200. 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  140. 

Conscience,  religion  cannot  en- 
dure without,  234. 


240 


INDEX 


Consubstantiation,  chief  objec- 
tion to,  95. 

Cordelia  and  Lear,  145. 

Cosmic  mind,  the,  27,  49. 

Creation,  17. 

Creeds,  178. 

Criticism,  the  present  an  age  of, 
149. 

Disciple  of  to-day,  the,  132, 133  ; 

his  hopes,  135. 
Discipleship,  the  great  test  of, 

134. 
Divinity   school,    the    modern, 

152. 
Doubt,  discipline  in,  148. 

"  Eeclesiastica  Musioa,"  82. 
Edwards,    Jonathan,    101,  102, 

142. 
Eternal  values  and  eternal  ideals, 

210,  211. 
Existence,  the    proof  of,    108- 

111. 
Exodus,  epic  of  the  deliverance 

of  Israel,  54. 
Experience,  tells  us  what  is,  28, 

30  ;  general  and  special,  31. 
Eye-witness,  testimony  of,  31. 
Ezekiel,  59. 


Fourth  Gospel,  the,  114, 140. 
Freedom  of  mind,  148,  149. 

Gethsemane,  92,  93. 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  21. 
God,  living  in,  7, 158 ;  sense  of  the 
fatherly  love  of,  8,  9;  being 
and  character  of,  the  sovereign 
object  of  faith,  46 ;  his  exist- 
ence independent  of  miracle, 
47  ;  the  terminus  of  all  things, 
48;  present  in  the  affairs  of 
men  and  nations,  60 ;  the  vi- 
sion of,  in  the  Bible,  65-72 ; 
historic  arguments  for  belief 
in,  72-78 ;  found  in  three  great 
spheres  of  human  existence, 
79 ;  faith  in,  not  dependent  on 
miracle,  82 ;  grounds  of  belief 
in,  110,  111 ;  natural  law  his 
speech,  142,  143,  146 ;  the  im- 
manence of,  164-166 ;  kinship 
of  man  with,  213,  214;  our 
accountability  to,  216. 

Gospel,  an  eternal,  172-236. 

Gospels,  the,  why  written,  114. 

Great  Britain  and  Germany,  197. 

Gyges,  the  ring  of,  84. 


Faith,  Christian,  the  sovereign 
object  of,  46 ;  the  present  op- 
portunity of,  149 ;  the  way  of, 
162-164 ;  what  it  is,  207,  208  ; 
two  sets  of  values  in,  209 ;  the 
heart  of,  213. 

Fate,  the  idea  of,  13;  in  poetry, 
14  ;  not  inductive,  16. 

Fates,  the  Greek,  13. 

Fichte,  J.  G.,  223 ;  his  "  Vocation 
of  Man,  "79. 


Healing  cult,  the,  198-201,  221. 

Hebrews,  Epistle  to  the,  author- 
ship of,  36,  70 ;  seldom  fully 
appreciated,  69-71. 

History,  the  two  sides  of,  39 ; 
but  a  poor  remnant  of  a  van- 
ished world-life,  40. 

Holy  Ghost,  the,  and  the  Bible, 
153,  154 ;  the  hope  of  the 
church,  156 ;  the  doctrine  of, 
180. 

Hosea,  prophecy  of,  a  unique 
book,  01. 


INDEX 


241 


Human  nature  not  a  depraved 

thing,  98-101. 
Human  relationships,  216. 
Humanism,  192,  193. 
Hume,  David,  11 ;  the  great  per- 

fecter  of  the  old  empiricism, 

189. 

Ideal,  different  meanings  of  the 

word,  224. 
Idealism,     189 ;     abstract    and 

transcendental,  190. 
Immanence  of  God,   the,    164- 

166. 
Infant,  an,  smile  of,  144. 
Influence,       intellectual       and 

moral,  205. 
Intellectual  integrity,  26. 
Irving,  Edward,  103. 
Isaiah,  37  ;  vision   of,  57 ;   the 

second,  61,  62. 

Jeremiah,  prophecy  of,  57-59. 

Jesus  Christ,  the  example  of  the 
way,  the  truth,  and  the  life, 
8,  9  ;  his  descent  into  time, 
18  ;  the  historic,  41 ;  and  mir- 
acle, 83-131 ;  the  teaching 
of,  85-88  ;  twofold  signifi- 
cance of  his  character,  88-92  ; 
the  temptation,  90,  92 ;  in 
Gethsemane,  92-94  ;  birth  of, 
96-105 ;  resurrection  of,  105- 
112;  with  the  apostles,  112, 
113  ;  Paul  our  representative 
believer  in,  112,  117 ;  Paul's 
vision  of,  117-122 ;  our  assur- 
ance that  he  is  the  risen  Lord, 
126-129;  his  fate  not  bound 
up  with  that  of  miracle,  130  ; 
the  one  adequate  assurance  of 
eternal  love,    140 :    his    life 


serves  a  double  end,  146, 147 ; 
of  yesterday,  to-day,  and  to- 
morrow, 158. 

Kant,  Immanuel,  149;   theistic 

argument  of,  75,  76. 
Karma,  13. 

Law,  the  scientific  conception 
of,  13, 20, 164, 165  ;  the  speech 
of  God,  142,  146. 

Lear  and  Cordelia,  145. 

Life  comes  from  life,  20. 

Liturgies,  177. 

Living  in  God,  the  solution  of 
our  graver  difficulties,  7  ;  the 
secret  of  existence  for  the 
Christian,  158. 

Logic,  validity  of  laws  of,  25 ; 
and  dogmatic  denial  of  mira- 
cle, 29. 

Lord's  Prayer,  the,  does  not 
mention  miracle,  85. 

Lucretius,  14. 

Luther,  Martin,  36,  141. 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  73. 

Man,  mind  and  character  of,  not 
exempt  from  law,  22 ;  the 
modern,  180;  his  world,  191, 
192,  215  ;  permanent  worth 
of,  193,  194  ;  kinship  with 
God,  213,  214. 

Marriage,  the  ideal  state,  99- 
101. 

Materialism,  202. 

Maurice,  Frederick  Denison,  142. 

Mechanism  and  spirit,  the  union 
of,  143-148. 

Mental  healing,  198-201,  221. 

Mind,  not  exempt  from  law,  22 ; 
freedom  of,  148, 149. 


242 


INDEX 


Ministry,  the  Christian,  151-153. 

Miracle,  not  essential  to  religion, 
4,  5 ;  its  fortune  not  identical 
with  that  of  religion,  7;  reality 
of,  always  under  suspicion,  10, 
11 ;  now  questioned  by  pro- 
foundly religious  men,  12,  22, 
23 ;  attitude  of  scientific  men 
toward,  12,  13 ;  the  fashion  of 
the  world's  intellect  against, 
24;  antecedent  improbability 
of,  31 ;  logically  possible,  but 
improbable,  33,  165;  in  the 
category  of  the  un verifiable, 
42;  no  part  of  genuine  his- 
tory, 45 ;  existence  of  God  in- 
dependent of,  47 ;  in  the  Old 
Testament,  53-64 ;  conscious- 
ness of  God,  in  the  Bible, 
independent  of,  71 ;  historic 
arguments  for  belief  in  God 
exclude,  73, 74 ;  of  small  con- 
cern to  the  true  believer  in 
God,  78 ;  fortune  of,  does  not 
involve  our  faith  in  God,  82 ; 
and  Jesus  Christ,  83-131 ;  no 
mention  of,  in  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  85;  fate  of,  does  not 
involve  that  of  Jesus,  130 ;  and 
the  Christian  life,  132-171; 
does  not  belong  to  our  gen- 
eration, 135 ;  the  natural  se- 
quence of  the  transcendental 
conception  of  God,  166. 

Miraculous,  the,  and  the  me- 
chanical, 47,  48. 

Miraculous  universe,  a,  153, 154. 

Money,  the  chief  concern  of  the 
business  world,  197. 

Moral  government  of  the 
world,  4. 

Moral  ideal,  the,  denial  of,  218- 


230;    genesis    of   the   denial, 

222 ;  in  man's  life,  233,  234. 
Morality,  too  much  a  question  of 

etiquette  and  diplomacy,  195. 
Mulf  ord,  Elisha,  222. 
Miinsterberg,     Hugo,     on     the 

Eternal  Values,  210. 
Mystics,  the,  82. 

Natural  law,  slight  or  profound 
sense  of,  31, 32 ;  the  speech  of 
God,  142,  143,  146. 

Naturalism,  192. 

Nature,  and  religion,  10 ;  inva- 
riable order  in,  14,  15;  idea 
of  fixed  order  in,  an  assump- 
tion, 19 ;  value  of  the  scientific 
conception  of,  26 ;  uniformity 
of,  a  reasonable  assumption, 
28,  29,  31 ;  belief  in  the  flexi- 
bility of,  31,  32 ;  order  of,  the 
speech  of  God,  142. 

New  Testament,  strength  of,  the 
assurance  that  Jesus  is  alive, 
128. 

Newi 
5, 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  17. 

Nicias,  high  resolve  of,  212. 


izs.       ^ 

wmav 


John    Henry,    cited, 


Objectivity  of  thought,  232. 
GMipus  and  Antigone,  145. 
Old    Testament,    the,    greatest 

things   in,  are   isolated   from 

miracle,  53-64. 
Omar  Khayyam,  14. 
Order,  invariable,  in  nature,  14, 

15 ;  scientific  conception  of,  16 ; 

idea  of,  an  assumption,   19; 

essential  to  mind,  27,  49 ;  the 

foundation  of  science,  50 ;  of 

nature,  the  speech  of  God,  143. 


INDEX 


243 


Origen,  140;  on  the  authorship 
of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews, 
36. 

Orthodoxy,  the  traditional,  38. 

Paley,  William,  73. 

Parenthood,  sanctity  of,  100-102. 

Park,  Edwards  A.,  cited,  18,  19. 

Paul,  the  apostle,  and  predes- 
tination, 15;  and  imperial 
Christianity,  41 ;  his  con- 
sciousness of  God,  66,  67  ;  the 
great  witness  for  the  risen 
Christ,  112, 117 ;  the  temporal 
note  absent  from  his  expe- 
rience, 116;  address  before 
Agrippa,  117,  118;  his  vision 
of  Jesus,  117-120;  influence 
of  the  vision,  121,  122,  125; 
his  sufferings,  123;  his  per- 
sonality, 124;  chief  signifi- 
cance of  his  faith,  139. 

Peter,  and  the  resurrection  of 
Jesus,  111,  112. 

Phenomenalism,  pure,  188. 

Plato,  story  of  the  ring  of  Gyges, 
84 ;  the  closing  chapter  of  his 
"  Phaedo,"  215. 

Prayer,  177. 

Preacher,  task  of  the,  187 ;  and 
the  healing  cult,  199. 

Predestination,  15 ;  not  proved 
by  induction,  16. 

Probability,  the  guide  to  life  in 
historical  investigation,  36. 

Progress,  persistent  opposition 
essential  to,  26. 

Prophets,  the  Hebrew,  56-62. 

Psalms,  the,  63,  64. 

Quakers,  the  inner  light  of  the, 

82. 


Rainbow,  the,  God's  covenant  of 
order  in  nature,  51,  52. 

Religion,  independent  of  mira- 
cle, 4,  5,  167 ;  its  fortune  not 
identified  with  that  of  miracle, 
7 ;  the  genius  of,  7 ;  relation 
to  other  human  interests  and 
to  nature,  10;  none  without 
God,  46 ;  an  historic  phenome- 
non, 172 ;  its  greatest  exem- 
plars and  masterpieces  in  the 
past,  175 ;  primarily  an  affair  of 
exalted  being,  176 ;  the  custom 
of,  177,  178 ;  the  modern  man 
not  original  in,  180;  revival 
of,  181 ;  the  teacher  of,  187 ; 
as  a  therapeutic  agent,  198- 
201;  warfare  of  sects,  203, 
204;  the  philosophy  of,  217, 
230 ;  called  a  tangle  of  errors 
and  superstitions,  225,  226; 
its  order  of  experimentation, 
232, 233 ;  cannot  endure  with- 
out conscience,  234. 

Resurrection,  the,  105-112. 

Revival  of  religion,  naturally 
desired,  181. 

Revivalism,  professional,  182. 

Ruth  and  Naomi,  144,  145. 

Santayana,  George,  his  "  Life  of 
Reason  "  cited,  189. 

Schleiermacher,  Friedrich,  142; 
our  debt  to,  77,  78. 

Scholar,  the,  work  of,  173,  174, 
178, 180. 

Science,  the  method  of,  16,  17; 
human,  strictly  contempora- 
neous, 25. 

Sects,  warfare  of,  203,  204. 

Sex  instinct,  the,  220,  221. 

Sin,  the  sense  of,  233. 


244 


INDEX 


Smile,  the,  of  an  infant,  144. 

Smith,  W.  Robertson,  222. 

Socrates,  Greek  philosophy  an 
enigma  without,  41 ;  his  argu- 
ment for  the  existence  of  God, 
72, 73 ;  confronting  death,  215. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  14. 

Spinoza,  Baruch,  11,  14,  77. 

Spirit,  union  of  mechanism  and, 
143-148 ;  what  is,  200,  201. 

Stephen,  the  martyr,  215. 

Subjectivity  of  thought,  232. 

Taylor,  Nathaniel  W.,  a  great 
figure  in  New  England  theo- 
logy, 1-5. 

Temporal,  the,  65. 

"  Theologia  Germanica,"  82. 

Theology,  a  great  and  difficult 
science,  2. 

Thomson,  James,  his  "  City  of 
Dreadful  Night,"  14. 

Thought,  objective  and  subject- 
ive, 232. 

Transubstantiation,  chief  objec- 
tion to,  95. 

Uniformity  of  nature,  the,  a  rea- 
sonable assumption,  28,  29,  31. 


Unity,  professional  architects 
of,  184. 

Universe,  the,  modern  concep- 
tion of,  13 ;  a  miraculous,  153, 
154. 

Unverifiable,  the,  not  necessarily 
untrue,  35  ;  belief  extends  far 
into  the  region  of,  37 ;  not  an 
essential  part  of  a  reasonable 
faith,  38;  miracle  belongs  in 
category  of,  42. 

Verifiable,  the,  belief  not  limited 
to,  36,  37 ;  includes  what  is 
sure  and  mighty  in  Christian 
faith,  44. 

Verification,  made  by  the  living, 
28  ;  some  things  not  open  to, 
34,  43, 44. 

Virgin  birth,  the,  96-105. 

Wisdom-literature      of     Israel, 

without  miracle,  55. 
World,  the  external,  reality  of, 

108,  109. 

Yale  University,  1. 
Zeno  and  Calvin,  15. 


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